Cape Town - The province’s universities are gearing up to welcome first-year students for 2020, and warned that any walk-in first-time applications for next year would not be accepted.
Stellenbosch University (SU), University of Cape Town (UCT), University of the Western Cape (UWC) and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) all said applications for undergraduate programmes in 2020 were already closed.
However, CPUT spokesperson Lauren Kansley said the closing date was September 30, with the exception of newly approved Higher Education Framework
qualifications such as “advanced diplomas, which will close on November 13. We will open for late applications only in courses with space”.
Kansley said CPUT had received about 70000 applications (150000 application choices) and 7959 applicants had been fully accepted.
UWC spokesperson Gasant Abarder said the institution would embark on a selection process.
“Only then will successful applicants be advised where they have been accepted. It is thus too early to say,” Abarder said, however, they anticipated receiving under 70000
applications. SU spokesperson Susan van der Merwe said they had received 38000 applications for the 5500 available places for first-year students.
“For the 2019 academic year we have 5 043 newcomer first-year students. The total number of enrolments for 2019 is 31 681, of which 20 130 are undergraduates, 10 412 are post-graduates and 1 139 are occasional students,” Van der Merwe said.
“At SU, we unfortunately cannot accept any late applications or ‘walk-ins’ for undergraduate programmes as the number of applications received by the deadline of June 30 every year, by far exceeds the number of available places,” she said.
She said SU had made more offers of admission than it had available, “as many school-leavers apply to more than one institution”.