All black and coloured students who apply to study medicine at the University of Cape Town are considered to be "educationally disadvantaged" even if they attended private schools, documents before the Cape High Court have revealed.
By contrast, Indian students are divided into categories according to whether they attended private or government schools and are regarded as not having received a disadvantaged education under apartheid.
This, according to the Durban-based doctor parents of an Indian student who was not accepted to study medicine, showed that the university's medical school admission policy was "unreasonable and irrational".
The girl's parents claim that a list of UCT's current intake of first-year medical students reveals that not one of the successful black or coloured applicants admitted to the university were required to provide personal reports, which detail students' non-academic achievements and are required from all white and Indian students.
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But reinstated it when that girl's parents threatened legal action UCT Registrar Hugh Amoore earlier stated that applicants from "educationally disadvantaged backgrounds" - who would not have had the opportunities for leadership, volunteer services/work and extra-curricular activities - would not be required to produce personal reports and would be individually assessed.
Many black school-leavers were not given personal-report scores because their schools failed to supply the reports, UCT contended. Amoore also stated that government provided additional funding to public higher education institutions "with large proportions of disadvantaged students".
The list of this year's successful medical school applicants showed that black and coloured pupils who had matriculated from Herschel Girls' High School, Clarendon High School, Westerford High School and Gauteng school Roedean - all prestigious high schools - had not been required to submit a personal report.
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