KenSAP

General background. Kenya is a country of 35 million with a literacy rate of 85%, among the highest in Africa. Education is nominally compulsory and free for primary school (eight years). Secondary school (four years) costs upwards of $200 a year (per capita GDP is $1,100), and about half the appropriate age cohort is enrolled. The best-established secondary schools are boarding schools, because at the time they were founded high schools were few and far between and transportation was limited. Government-supported boarding schools now cost $400 or more per year, private schools roughly double that.

In spite of these costs, even the poorest families commonly struggle to educate their most promising children, some selling precious assets like land or cattle to pay the fees of the best schools for which their children qualify. Qualification is based on the national primary school final exam (KCPE). Top scorers nationwide are eligible for places in 17 highly selective “national” government-supported secondary schools or in comparable private schools. The next highest scorers qualify for so-called “provincial” schools, and the rest—the vast majority—are consigned to lowly “district” schools, which may be all the students’ families can afford, no matter how well the students scored on the KCPE. A number of KenSAP students have wound up at district schools under just these circumstances.

Not surprisingly, in view of this hierarchical structure, most top scorers on the national secondary school exam (KCSE) come from national or provincial schools. The KCSE is administered each October to about 300,000 Form Four students (high school seniors) throughout the country. Students generally take exams in eight subjects, most of which they have studied for four years. Their aggregate mark is based on seven subjects, English, Math, Kiswahili, two sciences and two other subjects. About 5% of the students who take KCSE score an aggregate B+ or better (there is no grade inflation in Kenya!), which qualifies them for places in state-supported universities. But those who qualify have to wait nearly two years after taking the KCSE before enrolling because of a mandatory gap period that resulted from structural imbalances introduced when Kenya abolished A-level education in 1989.

Kenyan anomalies. The two-year gap and other unique features of the Kenyan system may affect the way KenSAP students compare with rival international admission candidates. For one thing, the abolition of A-levels means that Kenyans face the SAT and TOEFL with two fewer years of secondary education than most Commonwealth students. This especially hurts the Kenyans in Critical Reading, where two more years of schooling might help to compensate for deficiencies in the current Kenyan curriculum, which neglects humanities in favor of math and science. (The medium of instruction in all subjects is English, but there are practically no first-language English teachers in the entire country.)

In addition, Kenyan candidates may be handicapped by the very straightforwardness of the country’s university admissions. The KCSE is all-important; nothing else counts. Thus, the resume building that is second nature to high school students in America and elsewhere is utterly unknown in Kenya. If a Kenyan student pursues an extra-curricular interest, it is a genuine interest, unalloyed by college admission considerations. But for that reason, the student’s list of activities may seem unusually short. Moreover, since recommendations are irrelevant for Kenyan university admission, teachers are accustomed to writing no more than a perfunctory sentence or two, along the lines of “Good student, well behaved.” And teachers’ evaluations often seem oddly skewed by a misplaced concern about overpraising. A student who breaks the school record on the KCSE might be rated “Good” or “Very good.”

For all this, American college admissions officers have generally been able to see beyond the apparent shortcomings in KenSAP applicants’ files; KenSAP applicants’ files; in the past three years, all of the program’s 38 candidates were admitted with full aid to highly selective colleges. And so far, notwithstanding a few missteps, the matriculated students have shown themselves well able to make the vast leap from rural Kenya to the most competitive US colleges. Their aggregated grades through the 2008-09 academic year, mostly in demanding math, science and computer classes, are noted on the About KenSAP page.