The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has modified its procedure for candidates seeking admission to the nation’s tertiary institutions in the 2016-2017 academic session.
The board has therefore introduced the “preferred choice” platform in its portal to enable candidates to have wider opportunities of securing admission.
The sale of admission form for the session commenced on September 30 and it will end on January 30, 2016.
The Chief Information Officer of the board, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, made this known in an exclusive interview with our correspondent on Monday.
The modification, he added, would lessen competition among candidates seeking placement to the nation’s “oversubscribed” universities.
Benjamin said, “What we did initially was that you only have one choice. Now, we have made it in such a way that if you miss the University of Lagos; University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaira, you will have an opportunity of going to another school.
“Before, all universities will be in first and second choice and that will not solve any problem. We have now decided to put a few of those schools we feel will have more spaces as more preferred.
“Institutions placed on the more preferred choice are those that are mostly not oversubscribed. This is because it will not make any sense if you place institutions like the ABU, UNILAG, OAU and UNN, when in actual sense they cannot even admit one third of the candidates that will choose them as most preferred.”
The board, in the 2015/16 session, had arbitrarily redistributed admission seekers to universities other than their first choice institutions, a development many parents and candidates kicked against.
JAMB had claimed that the redistributing policy was to accommodate more candidates, reduce wastage of admission opportunities as well as the stress parents and candidates go through in seeking placement in schools.
No fewer than 1.5million candidates sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination for about 500,000 admission spaces annually.
Source: Vanguard