JAMB
has finally ditched the allocation of cut off-marks for admissions into
tertiary institutions in Nigeria, the guideline for the 2016 admission
process released on Monday evening has shown.
Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced
the release of its guidelines for the 2016 admissions’ process.
The method, described as the point system option, was adopted after
an extensive one-week meeting JAMB had with universities and other
tertiary institutions’ administrators in the country.
According to the guidelines contained in a statement placed on its
website on Monday night, JAMB said that the modalities were going to be
based on point system.
While explaining how the admission process would work for Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination candidates and direct entry students,
the organisation stated that universities were going to charge fees for
screening of candidates at the end of the process for admission.
According to JAMB, the new method uses a point system to offer provisional admission to candidates.
“Before a candidate can be considered for screening, he/she
must have been offered a provisional admission by JAMB. The JAMB
admission checker portal is going to be opened soon for this process, so
praying is all you can do now,” JAMB said.
The second process, it said, was the point system where admission would depend on the point tally of the candidate.
The statement said, “JAMB’s provisional admission no longer
makes much sense this year, your points tally will decide your faith.
The points are evenly spread out between your O’ Level and JAMB results
to provide a level-playing field for all.
“In the first case, any candidate who submits only one result
which contains his/her relevant subjects already has 10 points. The exam
could be NECO, WASSCE, November/December WASSCE etc, but any candidate
who has two sittings only gets 2 points. So this means that candidates
with only one result are at an advantage but only just.”
The organisation added that the “next point grades fell into
the O’ Level grades where each grade would have it equivalent point;
A=6 marks, B=4 marks, C=3 marks, so the better the candidates’ grades,
the better his or her chances of securing admission this year.
“The next point is the UTME scores where each score range has
its equivalent point which can be summarised thus, 180-200=20-23 marks,
200-250=24-33 points, 251-300=34-43, 300-400=44-60 points,” JAMB explained.
Giving a breakdown, JAMB explained that each category would contain five JAMB results per point added.
For example a candidate with 180-185 gets 20 points, while a
candidate with 186-190 gets 21 points. JAMB added that the point system
for direct entry would be released soon.
JAMB stated that fees would still be charged for screening which
would replace the Post UTME test. It also emphasised that catchment and
educationally less-developed state would still be used for admission
into the nation’s tertiary institutions.
JAMB said, “Merit contains 45 per cent of the total candidates
for a particular course, Catchment contains 35 per cent and ELDS and
staff lists contains the rest. Cut off marks will be released by the
institutions this year in the form of points and not marks.
“If a school declares its cut off mark for Medicine as 90
points and JAMB grants a candidate with 250 a provisional admission but
his/her total points falls short of the 90 points, then he/she will lose
the admission. So the provisional admission is just a means to an end,
not the end in itself.”
