One million admitted out of two million UTME candidates in 2025

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The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has released a detailed breakdown of the 2025 UTME admission exercise, showing that 1,009,044 candidates were admitted out of 2,007,312 applicants across Nigerian tertiary institutions.

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The data, presented at the 2026 National Policy Meeting on admission guidelines and cut-off marks on Monday, detailed the number of applications, admissions and admission rates across categories.

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For Direct Entry candidates, 64,480 applied, while 37,918 were admitted, representing 59 per cent.

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In the 300 and above category, 17,189 applications were recorded, with 12,896 admissions, representing a 75 per cent admission rate.

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For candidates scoring 250–299, a total of 101,266 applied, out of which 73,944 were admitted, representing 73 per cent.

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In the 200–249 range, 452,838 candidates applied, while 268,567 were admitted, translating to 59 per cent.

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The 160–199 category recorded the highest number of applications at 997,811, with 494,544 admitted, representing 50 per cent.

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For the 140–159 band, 331,927 applied, while 113,049 were admitted, representing 34 per cent.

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In the 120–139 range, 39,204 applied, with 7,821 admitted, representing 20 per cent.

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For candidates scoring 100–119, 2,597 applied, while 305 were admitted, representing 12 per cent.

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The data shows a clear trend where higher UTME scores correspond with stronger admission chances, particularly within the 200 and above categories, which maintained admission rates above 70 per cent in some cases.

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However, JAMB data also indicates that admissions still occur across lower score bands, especially between 140 and 199, where the bulk of admissions were recorded due to institutional cut-off variations and programme demand.

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