THIS refers to this year’s merit criteria for oversees scholarship batch 6. In batch 5, I applied with a GAT score of 65 but the cut-off merit was 70. This year after a lot of hard work and securing a score of 81 after five attempts, I applied again, but still could not succeed. Confused, when I checked the cut-off merit there was no one near 81 marks. But I found out that no seat was allotted to IT in physical sciences group of Fata.

I want to know what the merit for this scholarship is. I wonder why an applicant belonging to ‘backward areas’ (Fata) and securing 81 marks in GAT, which even fulfils Punjab’s cut-off merit criteria, let aside Fata, does not get selected or be on merit.

It makes the criteria questionable. The only place for any competent and hardworking student would be HEC OSS scholarship, but without merit how a level of competency could be judged.

For the last two years I have been planning and working to get this scholarship and what just happened is beyond my comprehension. Does it mean that Pakistan does not need experts and doctors in IT and computer science? If that is the case, The HEC and the government should abolish computer science and IT departments from the institutes.

More importantly, the HEC should have mentioned in its advertisement in January 2014 that computer science/IT-related disciplines are not eligible instead of ridiculing the merit.

Does it mean that Pakistani students should not study these subjects for which there are scholarships even with just an average or lower GAT scores?

Sohail Wazir

Peshawar

Published in Dawn March 5th , 2015

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