6 Reasons students are not offered admission despite high UTME score
It is rampant to see applicants seeking admission into Universities in Nigeria not being offered admission despite their high UTME or Post-UTME score. Most of these candidates fail to realize that having a high JAMB score or post-UTME score is not a guarantee for admission. So many things come into play when various institutions sit to determine how the admission of each academic session will go.
Reasons
O’level result: Admission seekers must make sure they meet the admission requirements of their chosen course of study. Many Universities use the aggregate O’level results, UTME, and Post-UTME scores to determine the overall cut-off mark. I have heard of candidates who lost out despite their high UTME score due to their inability to have five credit passes in the O’ level subjects required for their course. Students should have As and Bs for a better chance since admission is now competitive.
Low UTME score: Candidates seeking admission should note that most universities compute both UTTME and post-UTME scores to calculate the student’s average score. Hence, having a low UTME score can also hinder one’s opportunity to gain admission, even if you have a high post-UTME score. It is always advisable for students to score relatively high (like 250 and above) coupled with a high post-UTME score to be on the safer side.
University and course of choice: A student with 70% on aggregate may not be able to study Medicine and Surgery at Universities like UI, but such a score may study the same course at other Universities. What this means is that some universities are more competitive than others. This is due to the number of students who chose those universities as their first choice. So, you will need to score relatively high to be admitted to such schools.
Wrong UTME combination: This is one of the reasons some students lose admission despite beating the post-UTME cut-off point. For instance, a student seeking admission to Electrical/Electronics Engineering should select Physics as part of his UTME subject combination. Before any student fills out his or her JAMB form, he or she should go through the JAMB brochure to learn the subject combination for his or her course of study.
University’s catchment and Educationally Less Developed States (ELDS) area: Most federal universities, including some state universities, still retain the catchment area and ELDS policy in selecting students for admission. For instance, UI ELDS are majorly Northern states, with a cut-off mark for them, which is different from the general cut-off mark. This implies that prospective students from the country’s Northern region have higher chances of gaining admission.
Moreover, institutions like UNILAG have catchment areas that constitute major Southwestern states. This implies that prospective students from the South West have higher chances of gaining admission. For example, a prospective student from Oyo state who scored 65, applying to study Mechanical Engineering, may be offered admission, while another student from Anambra state who scored 68 may not. This is so because if the catchment cut-off point for Oyo is 65 while the general cut-off is 70, such a student from Anambra state has lost the admission despite having a higher score than his counterpart from the catchment zone.
University admission policy: Many universities adopt a policy as a yardstick in admitting students. Often, such policies are not made public. Admission seekers, therefore, have to find specific admission policies of their prospective universities from friends and families who are schooling in such universities.
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