5 things to know about the new JAMB point-based admission

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has adopted the point system option as the basis for its admission process for 2016.

The new modality was agreed upon after a weeklong meeting between JAMB, universities and other tertiary institutions’ administrators.

The admission process would work for Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination candidates and direct entry students while universities are to charge fees for screening of candidates at the end of the process for admission.

JAMB’s provisional admission must precede university’s

Before a candidate can be considered for screening, he/she must have been offered a provisional admission by JAMB.

What this means is that without a provisional admission from JAMB, a candidate is ineligible for consideration by any tertiary institution.

Admission to depend on points

JAMB’s provisional admission will now depend on the tally of points attained by a candidate.

The points are evenly spread out between a candidate’s O’ Level and JAMB results “to provide a level-playing field for all”, JAMB management says.

One sitting still has the upper hand

“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.”

In essence, a candidate who has only one sitting is likely to get more points than those who have multiple sittings.

Cutoff marks to be in form of “points” not “marks”

“Cutoff marks will be released by the institutions this year in the form of points and not marks.”

“If a school declares its cutoff 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.”

How the point system works

The candidate’s total points are gotten from the ‘O’ Level grades and JAMB scores’.

Each grade would have its equivalent point; A=6 marks, B=4 marks, C=3 marks, so the better the candidates’ O’ Level grades, the better his or her chances of securing admission.

The next point is the UTME scores where each score range has its equivalent point which can be summarised thus: a candidate with 180-185 gets 20 points; a candidate with 186-190 gets 21 points; a candidate who gets between 200-250 in JAMB has 24-33 points while that who scores 300-400 is entitled to 44-60 points.

JAMB says tertiary institutions are allowed to charge candidates fees for screening.