5 universities adopt 200 as admission cut-off mark

..  Why JAMB settled for 120

No fewer than five universities have adopted a Unified Tertiary Matriculation Ex­amination (UTME) score of 200 as the minimum cut-off mark for candidates seek­ing admission into such in­stitutions for the 2017/2018 academic session.

This is even as it has been discovered that about 23 universities submitted 120

 as their cut-off mark at the Joint Consultative Meeting between the Joint Matricu­lation and Admissions Board (JAMB) and heads of tertiary institutions which held pe­nultimate week.

 Findings by The AU­THORITY also showed that some polytechnics and colleges of education, even asked for as low as 100 marks for admission during the same academic session.

The institutions that adopt­ed 200 cut-off marks were Uni­versity of Benin, Edo State; University of Lagos, Lagos State; University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State and University of Ibadan, Oyo State. All the other universities adopted lower cut-off marks.

These facts which was ob­tained by The AUTHORITY, also showed that 200 was the highest cut-off mark adopted by any institution under the flex­ible admission policy recently agreed upon by stakeholders in the higher education sector.

It was also revealed that Federal University, Gashua, Yobe State, opted for the least cut-off mark of 140 among the federal-owned universities, while Lagos State University cut-off mark of 190 is the high­est among state universities.

180 cut-off mark submit­ted by the Federal Polytech­nic, Nekede, Imo State, is the highest among the polytech­nics in the country, while 110 chosen by the Tansian Univer­sity, Oba, Anambra State, is the lowest among universities (pri­vate and public) in the country.

Meanwhile, a report from competent sources have re­vealed that the University of Il­orin (UNILORIN), Kwara State, received the highest number of admission applications from candidates who sat for this year’s UTME.

UNILORIN, which is ‘im­mune’ to the frequent strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), received applications from 104,038 stu­dent-applicants. The figure rep­resents almost about 10 per cent of the 1,212,818 total applicants seeking admissions into federal universities in Nigeria.

University of Ilorin’s figure is followed by the Ahmadu Bel­lo University, Zaria, with stu­dents applicant of 89,688 and University of Benin with 85,486 applicants, while University of Nigeria, Nsukka, is fourth with 79,073 applicants and Univer­sity of Lagos fifth with 78,899.

At the other end of the list for federal universities admis­sion, Federal University, Dut­sima, Katsina State and Federal University, Gashua, Yobe State, rank 38th and 39th with stu­dent application of 3807 and 1897 respectively.

Equally, information ob­tained by our reporter showed that higher institutions in the country had last year asked JAMB to regularize the admis­sion of 49,426 students whose admission did not follow due process. A federal university in the North West zone is a ma­jor culprit in this anomaly with 1,527 of such regularization re­quests emanating from it.

According to JAMB Reg­istrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyode, it was this type of bizarre admis­sion procedure that prompt­ed JAMB to approve a down­ward review of cut-off marks so that only prospective students that met the minimum criteria would be offered admission, instead of bringing in students with terribly low scores for ad­mission regularization at the expense of students with high­er scores.

The AUTHORITY recalls that JAMB and other stake­holders had during the recent Combined Policy Meeting in Abuja pegged admission cut-off mark at 120 and above and 100 to 180 for universities and polytechnics respectively. The decision has genera