The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that the minimum admissible scores for the 2025/2026 academic session have been fixed at 150 for universities, 100 for polytechnics, 100 for colleges of education, and 140 for colleges of nursing sciences.
The announcement was made on Tuesday in a statement posted on the Board’s official X (formerly Twitter) page.
“The minimum admissible scores for admissions for the next academic session have been fixed at 150 for universities, 100 for polytechnics, 100 for colleges of education, and 140 for colleges of nursing sciences by the stakeholders,” the board stated
The cut-off marks were agreed upon by stakeholders, which include heads of tertiary institutions across the country, during the 2025 JAMB Policy Meeting held in Abuja.
Schools set limits
The establishment of minimum cut-off marks is part of JAMB’s effort to strike a balance between maintaining academic standards and widening access to tertiary education. It also helps guide institutions in their admission decisions and ensures uniformity in the system.
The process of setting these national minimum scores involves deliberations among vice-chancellors, rectors, provosts, and heads of relevant regulatory agencies. These institutions are allowed to set their own cut-off marks above the national minimum, but not below it.
This means while a university may choose to adopt a cut-off of 180 or higher, no university is allowed to admit a candidate with a UTME score below 150. The same applies to other tiers of tertiary education.
What you should know
In 2024, JAMB officially approved 140 as the national minimum cut-off mark for admission into Nigerian universities, while polytechnics and colleges of education were set at 100.
- This benchmark, known as the National Minimum Tolerable UTME Score (NTMUS), was agreed upon during the 2024 Annual Policy Meeting on Admissions held at the National Judicial Institute in Jabi, Abuja.
- Prior to that, between 2016 and 2022, university cut-off marks fluctuated between 160 and 180 before settling at 140. The adjustments reflected concerns over standardizing academic entry levels.
- According to Nairametrics, this year recorded the highest UTME performance in 13 years. A total of 17,025 candidates (0.88%) scored 300 and above, compared to just 0.46% in 2024 and 0.35% in 2023
- Furthermore, 117,373 (6.08%) hit the 250-point mark or more up from 4.18% in 2024 and 3.73% in 2023 and 565,988 candidates (29.3%) scored above 200, compared to 24% the previous year
Despite allegations of malpractice and technical glitches that led to a national resit, JAMB confirmed that only about 21.5% of candidates achieved scores above 200.
