JAMB Kept The Cut-Off At 150. Almost No University Will Use It.
Abuja · Thursday 20 August 2026
At its annual policy meeting on admissions, held in Abuja on 11 May, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board retained 150 as the minimum score for admission into Nigerian universities for the 2026/2027 session. Roughly 1.5 million candidates registered for this year's UTME.
Every August the same misunderstanding circulates, and it costs families money. So, plainly: 150 is not the mark that gets you into university. It is the mark below which no university is permitted to consider you at all.
The numbers, as adopted
| Institution type | National minimum UTME score |
|---|---|
| Universities | 150 |
| Colleges of nursing sciences | 150 |
| Polytechnics and monotechnics | 100 |
Benchmarks adopted at the 2026 policy meeting, following a vote by vice-chancellors present.
Note the last line of that caption. The benchmark was not handed down by the board. It was adopted on a vote by the vice-chancellors in the room, which is to say by the people who will then largely ignore it in their own admissions.
Floor, not threshold
What the national minimum does is define the outer boundary of the admissible pool. Below it, an institution cannot legally admit you. Above it, every institution sets its own cut-off, and those sit considerably higher.
Some federal universities set 200. Others settle for 180. Competitive courses at competitive institutions run higher again, and medicine, law, pharmacy and engineering at any of the older federal universities have not been reachable at 150 within living memory.
So a candidate holding 155 is admissible in the technical sense and, at most of the institutions they are likely to want, not competitive. That gap between admissible and competitive is where a very large amount of family money goes every year, spent on applications that were never going to succeed.
A candidate holding 155 is admissible in the technical sense and, at most institutions they would want, not competitive.
The change that actually changes something
Buried under the cut-off headline is a policy shift with more practical effect.
Candidates seeking admission into the Nigeria Certificate in Education programme with a minimum of four credit passes will no longer be required to sit the UTME. The same exemption applies to candidates seeking National Diploma admission in non-technology agricultural and agriculture-related courses. It takes effect from the 2026/2027 exercise.
This is a bigger deal than it reads. The UTME is a cost and a logistical barrier: a registration fee, travel to a centre, and a single sitting on a fixed date that a very large number of candidates fail for reasons that have nothing to do with ability. Removing it for teacher training and for agricultural diplomas targets exactly the two sectors where Nigeria has a chronic shortage of qualified entrants.
Whether it works depends on something the policy does not address, which is whether people want those places. Nigeria does not have a teacher shortage because the UTME is in the way. It has one because of what teachers are paid.
The deadlines, which people miss
| Institution type | Admissions must conclude by |
|---|---|
| Public universities | 31 October 2026 |
| Private universities | 30 November 2026 |
| Polytechnics, monotechnics, colleges of education | 31 December 2026 |
Admission windows for the 2026/2027 session.
These matter because Nigerian admissions do not run on a single national clearing date. They run institution by institution, and a candidate who is waiting on a first choice while the deadline at a realistic second choice passes has lost a year.
The arithmetic nobody in the room said out loud
About 1.5 million candidates registered for this year's UTME. Nigeria's tertiary system does not have 1.5 million places, and it has never been close.
The gap between applicants and capacity is the actual admissions story in this country, and it is a capacity problem rather than a standards problem. Adjusting a benchmark by ten points in either direction moves nobody into a lecture hall that does not exist.
The policy meeting is an annual ritual in which a genuine crisis of supply gets discussed as though it were a question of quality control. That is not the board's fault. JAMB administers an examination and allocates candidates to institutions. It does not build institutions.
Find out the actual departmental cut-off at each institution you are applying to, not the national minimum. Institutions publish theirs and they are frequently thirty to fifty points higher. Apply where the score is genuinely competitive, note which deadline applies to that institution type, and do not spend money on an application to a course that has not admitted anybody at that score in years.
Where the ones who miss out actually go
They split roughly four ways. Some resit, sometimes repeatedly, and the resit population is a substantial share of every year's registrations. Some take a place at a private university at fees that put real strain on a household. Some go abroad, which has become a significant outflow of both people and foreign exchange. And a large number simply stop, having spent money on registration, tutoring and travel for a process that was arithmetically never going to accommodate them.
That last group is the one the policy meeting does not discuss, and it is the largest.
Why the degree is worth this much fighting for
The Nigerian labour market rewards credentials to a degree that looks irrational until you see what it is substituting for.
In an economy where formal hiring is thin and informal networks decide most opportunities, a degree is one of very few portable, verifiable signals a young person can acquire. It is not primarily about what was learned. It is about being legible to an employer who has no other way to assess you.
That is why families spend disproportionately on it, why resitting is common, and why an admissions system that turns away the majority of applicants produces the pressure it does.
The thing worth arguing about
There is a reasonable case that a national minimum should not exist at all, and that institutions should simply be free to set and publish their own.
The counter-case is that a floor prevents the weakest institutions from admitting anybody who walks in, which is a real risk in a system with a large number of underfunded private institutions competing on accessibility.
Both positions are defensible. What is not defensible is the annual pretence that the number adopted in that room is the number that determines who gets an education in Nigeria. It is not. Capacity does, and capacity was not on the agenda.
Reporting: The Guardian Nigeria, Channels Television, P.M. News, Premium Times and Legit.ng, covering the JAMB policy meeting of 11 May 2026.
Read next
- Atiku Wants Twenty Million Votes And Is Building Downward To Get Them
- Six Parties Sat Down In Abuja. The Last Time They Tried This It Collapsed.
- Nigerian Designers Are Building A Second Market In London
Whatever the news does this week, somebody at home still has to eat. The Send Home boxes land as a food shop, a care package or a learning kit. Naira pricing here.
