bhoven, I noticed you also went deathly quiet after i sorta sexposed you about PS, SAFOS and OMS scholarships. The stats before 2008 were even funnier. In 2007 only 52 PSC scholarships were given out out of over 1700 applicants, but this figure includes the low rung SGS which took up more than half of this number hahaha.
The 2006 stats were perhaps the ones that made the rejectees angriest because that year 1720 applications from top students were received but PSC only gave out 39 scholarships- the lowest number of its history. SGS had been axed from 2002 onwards. Which means the actual number of SAFOS + SPFOS + OMS given out without SGS is really under 40 out of more than 2000 applications.
You have just confirmed what I said....there were more applicants in recent years because the number of students getting 4 straight As in the A levels increased...yet the PSC gave out less scholarships...what do you think is the reason?
No. of OMS was reduced in 2006 onwards, to lessen the gap of prestige between SAFOS and OMS.
OMS was never in the same league as SAFOS. All thru the 80s to the early 2000s, people recall and attach the SAFOS to the bumper crop of ministers. SAFOS typically do not number beyond 10, the highest in a long time was 11 in 1998, but that was an aberration. The most common number is between 5 and 7.
OMS however, numbered as many as 50 in the 90s and 2000s, typically more than 5 times as many. Compared to SAFOS, it is much easier to get an OMS.
The number of OMS given out was halved to close the gap between SAFOS and OMS. Not to mention the widely spread urban legend that to get an SAFOS, you need to get an OMS first. Now PSC wants people to know that SAFOS is regarded as an OMS + military component, and that it's not that far off from SAFOS.
BTW, the halving exercise of OMS was carried out swiftly in one year (2006), in which we saw the no. of OMS given out halved from the year before (2005), literally. It wasn't an incremental, gradual decline in standards as you claim. Your 'guess', which you obviously made from someone outside of the system, doesn't even make sense to the layman.
Since 2007, PSC has kept the no. of OMS steadily at about 30+, to keep it closer to SAFOS, while giving out a large number of the lower rung SGS. To do so, it cleverly resuscitated the SGS, which had been axed earlier. The total number of scholarships when you include the SGS, has actually grown.
This way, it can keep applicants happy, by putting out a bigger number of "total scholarships given out", and still narrow the gap between OMS and SAFOS.
Finally, in 2009, due to the overwhelming number and quality of applicants, PSC gave out a bumper crop of OMS.