Apparently, scoring a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 4.0 for your STPM will no longer guarantee your entry into highly demanded courses in Malaysian public universities - not that it ever did anyway. But let’s disregard my “unjustified” comment and get back to the facts.

According to the Higher Education Ministry, university applications are now assessed on two criteria. One: Academic results, with a weightage of 90%. Two: Extra-curricular involvement, with a weightage of 10%. This means that even if you have a 4.0 CGPA but have zero co-curricular involvement marks, you’ll score a maximum of only 90% under this new system.

For the remaining 10 marks, your two highest scores from your extra-curricular activities will be added together - presumably with each activity contributing a maximum of 5 marks. Of course, National Service trainess will get preference with 6 marks instead - not that there is really any logical reason for this.

Overall, this just means that “meritocracy” is now defined a little more broadly than before, with both academic and co-curricular involvement being taken into account. This is definitely a good thing (in most cases), but whether it will be implemented correctly is another story altogether.