The ABC of JAMB’s new point system

After an extensive one-week meeting between the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) and administrators of Universities  and other Tertiary institutions, JAMB has released the guidelines for provisional admission this year into tertiary institutions in what was called the Point System Option.

According to JAMB, candidates must have been offered a provisional admission by JAMB before he/she can be considered for screening. After which they can proceed for screening, during which the point system will be used.

According to JAMB, the points are evenly spread out between your O’ Level and JAMB results to provide a level-playing field for all. It is the points that determines a candidate’s fate.

 

Candidates with one sitting automatically gets 10 points while those with two sittings will get 2 points.

“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.”

Each O’ Level grade would have its equivalent point : A=6 marks, B=4 marks, C=3 marks. The better the grades, the higher the candidates chance of gaining admission.

“The next point is the UTME scores where each score range has its equivalent point which can be summarized thus : 180-200=20-23 marks, 200-250=24-33 points, 251-300=34-43, 300-400=44-60 points,” as stated by JAMB. The range works by adding one point for every 5 marks. For example 180-185=20, 186-190=21, and so on.

Jamb also added that candidates will still be charged for the screening exercise. Catchment  and educationally less-developed state (ELDS) will also be considered when offering admission.

“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.”