Matriculation quandary?

I was really surprised to see this report in the Star today. It highlighted the case of Tan Tze Ning, who got straight As (it didn't say how many or whether they were all A1s) in her SPM but still failed to secure a place in the matriculation program.

We aren't told how many As she obtained or if they were straight As so I'm guessing that she probably wasn't a 10A1 scorer. While it may not be that surprising that she didn't get a JPA / PSD scholarship, what I am surprised by is the fact that she couldn't get into the matriculation program.

Tony has blogged about STPM versus Matriculation here and I recall that 10% of the matriculation places were opened to non-bumis about 2 years ago. If I recall correctly, there were initial complaints that there were not enough non-bumis to fill that 10% quota. If that is so, why is it that someone like Tze Ning, who seemed to have done relatively well, could not get into the matriculation program? Furthermore, it was reported that only 2 out of the 17 non-bumi students were accepted into the matriculation program from the same Jasin MRSM.

In my limited understanding, Maktab Rendah Sains Mara (MRSM) are secondary residential type schools where students stay and study on campus. Given that there are already very few non-bumis in MRSMs, shouldn't the education authorities have made it easier for these few non-bumis to get into matriculation programs? Isn't ethnic integration and inter-mixing an important criteria and goal in the larger scheme of national priorities?

Thankfully, there are options which Tze Ning has which might not have been available to her 20 years ago. I'm sure that if she waits it out a little longer, she can get into a STPM program in one of the secondary schools in Melaka, given that she is qualified to take STPM. She can always opt to do a pre-university program in a private college and might be able to obtain scholarships from some of these institutions. I'm sure that Dr. Wee Ka Siong, MP for Ayer Hitam and MCA Youth Education Bureau chief, can also pull some strings on her behalf. But the point is that he shouldn't have had to. She and most of her other MRSM non-bumi counterparts should have been accepted into a matriculation program in the first place.