Data obtained from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board on the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination revealed that the highest percentage of candidates for the examination chose medicine as their first-choice course of study in universities.
According to the 2023 statistics recently released by JAMB and obtained by our correspondent on Sunday, a total of 452,443 candidates applied for medicine in Nigerian universities, whereas there are only 78,578 MBBS admission slots.
Further details by the board revealed that 239,018 candidates applied for social science courses whereas, there are only 97,744 vacancies; 227,453 candidates applied for science-related courses with a total of 141,397 available slots.
For engineering courses, the board revealed that despite a vacancy of 68,896 in universities, a total of 163,123 candidates applied.
For admin-related courses, a total of 117,792 candidates applied, whereas there are only 38,725 vacancies.
For arts and humanities, JAMB revealed that a total of 85,264 candidates will battle for 52,221 slots.
However, further analysis of the data revealed that education and agricultural related-courses did not attract enough applicants.
For instance, only 52,702 candidates applied for education-related courses despite a vacancy of 111,176. Similarly, only 20,133 candidates applied for agriculture- related courses despite a vacancy of 30,536.