The value of a direct entry to an undergraduate course
08 January 2025 | Education
First, I would like to dedicate this week's article to the late Ayman al Amri. May he rest in peace. Ayman was a former colleague who worked for the Higher Education Admission Centre (HEAC) as an expert in school qualifications other than the General Education Diploma (GED) certificate. He will surely be remembered by probably hundreds of students and parents for patiently answering their questions, and this will be part of his legacy.
One of the questions various Omani school leavers often ask is how they could use a possible future scholarship to study at an overseas higher education institution that has already accepted them for a direct entry into an undergraduate degree.
‘Direct Entry’ is a term commonly used by many universities around the world when they consider an applicant to be ‘overqualified’ to pursue an English language course or foundation programme.
Such reputed higher education institutions usually use a holistic assessment and consider applicants based on their type of school qualification, aptitude and other factors, not just their grades. Meanwhile, the impartial and unbiased electronic system used by the Higher Education Admission Centre in Oman primarily screens candidates based on their school grades.
In 2016, what would soon be known as the Direct Entry Scholarship (DES) was implemented by the Oman's Ministry of Higher Education, which is now known as the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation. Back then, DES was a rather unique programme as it required students to submit an unconditional letter of admission to apply competitively for this external or study abroad scholarship instead of being screened primarily based on their school grades. After all, these students already made a timely application to at least one of the approved universities for a direct entry to an undergraduate degree course and, therefore, had already demonstrated their abilities to pursue their higher studies successfully.
The DES was not explicitly designed for holders of qualifications other than the Omani GED, such as the American high school diploma, IB or A-levels. However, the latter three qualifications are well known for their academic rigour, which prepares students to study at research-intensive university level. At the same time, the academic rigour also makes it more challenging for them to obtain excellent school grades.
It must be added that among DES applicants, there were Omani students from government schools who had managed to obtain unconditional offer letters from reputed universities in countries like the US. After all, the freshman year is considered a direct entry into the undergraduate degree programme. These successful candidates included students who had graduated from the Barka Bint Thaalaba Basic Education School for Girls. Furthermore, there were also applicants from social welfare families who were once selected by the Ministry of Education to pursue the IB diploma pathway at an international school in Oman.
Not only did the DES save the Oman Government at least one or two years of funding as the competitively selected candidates did not have to pursue any pre-sessional courses, but it also allowed students more room for flexibility in making their own informed choices. They chose their preferred course based on their talents and skills and selected a higher education institution based on their learning styles and favourite study destinations.
All in all, the DES further streamlined undergraduate scholarship applications and ensured fair competition among all scholarship candidates. This applied also to those Omani students who were not eligible to apply for this type of scholarship as there have always been other types of scholarships that do cover a pre-sessional language course or foundation programme.