JAMB releases new guidelines for 2016 admission process

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has released its guidelines for the 2016 admissions’ process.

The exam body said it has adopted what it termed the point system option after an extensive one-week meeting JAMB had with universities and other tertiary institutions’ administrators in the country.

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 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.

JAMB 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.”