Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), on Sunday, confirmed that 1st and 2nd choice admission exercise would be conducted for all institutions from 21st August, 2020, to a later date that would be determined by the Federal Ministry of Education and communicated to all the institutions.

It promised to abide by the already established admission process/criteria, particularly as it concerns academic qualifications for admission, quota system as prescribed by the regulatory bodies; UTME brochure as published and on IBASS; guidelines on admissions as prescribed by the institutions’ Proprietors (Federal, State and Private); and policy decisions on 2020 admissions exercise.

It also announced that the revised 2020 admission guidelines as approved by the Federal Ministry of Education has been dispatched to institutions, requesting that heads of institutions and admission officers carefully study and understand the content of the document, with a view to implementing it fully for a seamless and transparent admission exercise.

JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, in a letter addressed to Vice Chancellors, Rectors, Provosts, solicited the cooperation and understanding of the institutions, stressing the strategic importance of the guidelines to the success of the 2020 admission exercise.

He, however, warned them against “shoody deals” insisting that all admission exercise should be conducted on JAMB’s supervised Central Admission Processing System (CAPS), and that no institution is allowed to publish, announce, exhibit or paste any name(s) of admitted candidate without prior approval of the name on CAPS.

Oloyede referred the institutions to the decisions taken at the 2020 Policy Meeting on admission exercise, as well as other policy directives as contained in the address of the Minister of Education.

He requested that they comply with the guidelines, totally, insisting that sanctions shall be fully applied to institutions that violate the decisions.

In the letter, JAMB Registrar confirmed himself as Chairman, while heads of tertiary institutions; director of admissions, admission officers of tertiary institutions; JAMB desk officers; and candidates are principal participants in the admission process.

The document also advised candidates who desire to upgrade to Direct Entry (DE) from UTME, to logs into their profile, choose upgrade and complete the process at no cost. It added that the platform also allows the candidate to also change programme or/and institution at no cost.

“Once it’s done, ‘U’ is automatically added to original registration number and the uploaded result is automatically made available to the institution through CAPS. The upgrade can be done before or after Post-UTME but the candidate must notify the institution in order to update their download list from CAPS,” it noted.

Regarding the procedure for admission exercise, JAMB advised institutions to recommend candidates for admission after having presented to the Board, the approved general quota for each institution and the distribution to the various programmes; minimum UTME score for each programme; minimum DE qualification grades for DE candidates; components of cut-off marks and the allotted score for each component; the cut-off date for the 1st and 2nd choice admissions after which no result upload nor change of Institution as 1st Choice would be allowed among several others in accordance with the guideline document.

JAMB, however, insisted that, for a candidate to be registered in an institution from 2020 admissions exercise, such candidate must have been recommended by the institution; been approved and admitted by JAMB; accepted the offer online on JAMB’s website at no cost; printed both Result Slip and Admission Letter directly from JAMB’s website; and must have been screened and must have presented acceptable credentials.