The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has officially set the minimum scores required for admission into tertiary institutions for the 2025/2026 academic session, with universities now expected to admit only candidates who scored at least 150 in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
This development, announced via JAMB’s official X (formerly Twitter) account on Tuesday, follows a nationwide policy meeting held in Abuja where key stakeholders including vice-chancellors, rectors, provosts, and heads of regulatory agencies deliberated on the new national admission benchmarks.
According to the statement, the agreed minimum UTME scores are 150 for universities, 140 for colleges of nursing sciences, and 100 for both polytechnics and colleges of education.
While institutions retain the right to raise their individual admission thresholds above the national minimum, no school is permitted to admit candidates who score below the specified benchmark for their category. For instance, a university may adopt a cut-off of 180 or 200 based on programme competitiveness, but no university can consider candidates who score less than 150.
JAMB says the establishment of national minimum scores helps balance access to higher education with the need to uphold academic quality. It also serves to bring uniformity to the admission process across the country.
This year’s adjustment marks a notable shift from the 2024 standard, where the minimum UTME score for university admission stood at 140. Between 2016 and 2022, university cut-off marks had fluctuated between 160 and 180, reflecting a long-standing effort to standardize academic entry levels amid growing concerns about declining educational quality.
The 2025 decision also arrives against the backdrop of an unprecedented UTME performance. JAMB reported that this year recorded the highest scores in over 13 years. A total of 17,025 candidates representing 0.88% of all test-takers scored 300 and above, compared to 0.46% in 2024 and 0.35% in 2023.
Also, 117,373 candidates (6.08%) scored 250 or more, a significant jump from 4.18% in 2024 and 3.73% in 2023. Meanwhile, 565,988 candidates (29.3%) crossed the 200-point threshold, up from 24% in the previous year.
Despite allegations of widespread malpractice and technical hitches that led to a national resit of the exam, JAMB confirmed that only 21.5% of candidates achieved scores above 200, showing that while overall performance improved, a majority of candidates still fell below this mark.
The new cut-off scores are expected to guide tertiary institutions in screening candidates for admission into the 2025/2026 academic year. As the admission cycle begins, institutions will now set their internal policies in line with JAMB’s directive, with millions of candidates awaiting decisions that will shape the next phase of their academic journey.
