Photo credit: JAMB

The 2016 centralized guidelines by JAMB for admission into higher institutions in Nigeria is now obsolete. A new policy is in place now, which gives autonomy to respective institutions to set their preferred criteria. Remember that in the old policy, institutions were not allowed to conduct post UTME, rather they were directed to use point grading system whereby points were attached to each element such as – usage of single/combined O-Level results, O-Level grades, and Jamb scores.

Under the current admission policy 2017, schools can now conduct post UTME screening on prospective students with a caveat that screening fee payable should not exceed 2,000 Naira. Then respective institutions are to set their admission criteria on the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS).

This system promises to be more efficient and transparent. At the point of registration, each student inputs their O-Level results on the System which has interface with NECO and WAEC for authentication. After post UTME, institutions upload results on the System. Then the Systems automatically creates suggested admission list based on institution’s criteria and student’s qualification. See the detailed workflow on pages 9 & 10 of this pdf document.

Will Your School of First Choice Use the New Cut-off Mark?

No Jambite should get carried away with the new cut-off mark of 120. Your target should never be 120 but out-performing your counterparts in O-Level grades, and Jamb scores. Especially if your first choice is among those high-demand institutions. Top ten universities of first choice in 2017 UTME are the following.

Although, only 11.3% of candidates with appropriate O-Level qualification scored 200 and above in 2017 UTME, non of the high-demand institutions has the capacity to accommodate up to 20% of applications they received. So, it will not be how many met the cut-off mark but how many of the highly qualified candidates could an institution accommodate.

Another factor that may affect admission is how demand for degree is skewed in favour of three faculties. That is, out of total applicants of 1,722,236, about 1,050,000 students applied for Social Sciences, Medicine/Pharmaceutical/Health Science, and Sciences courses. Low-demand courses are in the faculties of Agriculture, Education, Law, and Arts. See the following statistics.

Source: JAMB

If you compare the above statistics to the population capacity of institutions, you should have an idea of why many students even with UTME score of up to 240 may not gain admission into their institution/course of first choice.

However, there is an interesting respite within the new CAPS. Applicants who are rejected by institutions of first choice despite meeting the general cut-off mark of 120 will be visible to institutions who still have space to contain more students. So they can offer admission to those students who meet their criteria, and the students can choose to accept or reject the offer, all within the robust System.

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