The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has explained the wisdom behind the ranking of over 1.9 million results of candidates that sat the 2025 UTME.
The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, who gave the reason for the measure during his presentation at the just-concluded policy meeting on admission into tertiary institutions held on 8th July, 2025, said the move was aimed at providing a better context and interpretation to scores and curbing the unnecessary celebration of so- called high scorers without considering their relative performance, thereby helping tertiary institutions make more informed admission decisions.
He explained that the ranking of the UTME results slip would put tertiary institutions in a better position, not only to assess the scores but would also ease the task of assessing the national ranking and standing of each applicant among their peers. Prof. Oloyede, while defending this initiative backed by extant law that created JAMB as an examination and ranking body carrying out an assessment of hitherto-qualified candidates, said the new system would go a long way towards addressing fraud, impersonation and acts of criminality perpetuated oy candidates and unscrupulous elements, who issue fake and nflated scores to gullible candidates.
He said, “For the 2025 UTME, a candidate, who scored 370 is ranked 16th among the nearly two million candidates. A score of 320 is ranked 5,806 while 250 is ranked 107, 819.
“A score of 200 places a candidate at position 533,805, and 180 ranks at 948,026. Lower scores such 140. 120, and 100 are ranked at 1,855,607; ,900,872; and 1,903,661, respectively.”
Prof. Oloyede explained that the ranking system is a paradigm shift to de-emphasise the use of score without the global picture and assist institutions in screening and selection of the best-qualified candidates, especially in highly- competitive programmes and choice of institutions.
‘Candidates ranking will be indicated on the result slip for each candidate. This will help the institutions determine the candidates to be admitted. It will also discourage candidates who parade fake scores.”