Young South Africans who wish to study at any institution of higher learning in 2019 have only 10 days left to apply for funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).

The spokesperson for NSFAS, Kagisho Mamabolo, said on Tuesday since the opening of the application cycle in September the scheme has received 262 658 applications and evaluated  150 000 applications.

“A total of 44 702 applications are missing support documents and, as a mitigation plan, we have since communicated to these applicants to submit these documents. We will continue to send out communications through the course of the applications cycle,” Mamabolo said.

The funding scheme has been receiving about 5000 applications a day.

“We call on all young people who have not yet applied for 2019 financial aid to submit their online applications or visit their nearest National Youth Development Agency centres before the closing date at the end of this month."

So far, KwaZulu-Natal has the most number of applicants with 76 507. It is followed by Gauteng with 56 407 applicants and 37 204 applicants from Limpopo. Meanwhile, only 2 198 applications were received from the Northern Cape.