In a significant policy shift aimed at enhancing transparency and providing greater insight into candidates’ performance, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that the national ranking of candidates will now be included on the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result slips. This new development affects the 1,905,539 candidates who participated in the 2025 UTME exercise across the country.
This was disclosed in an official statement released by the Board, which noted that the ranking initiative is part of its ongoing efforts to improve the credibility and relevance of the UTME results in the nation’s tertiary education admissions process. With this innovation, each candidate will not only see their score breakdown but also understand where they stand nationally among their peers who wrote the same examination.
According to JAMB, this move is designed to give candidates, parents, institutions, and other stakeholders a clearer picture of a candidate’s relative performance in the annual examination. It is also expected to serve as a merit-based yardstick in admission processes, especially in competitive fields where candidates score closely.
The Board clarified that the ranking is based strictly on the UTME scores and is devoid of any post-examination adjustments or considerations such as catchment or educationally less-developed states. It represents a direct comparative assessment of the raw scores of all candidates who took part in the 2025 UTME.
JAMB’s Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, emphasized the significance of the new policy, explaining that it aligns with global best practices in standardized testing. He pointed out that in many parts of the world, candidates are not only given scores but also percentile rankings or national performance indices to guide admissions and scholarship decisions.
“The inclusion of a national ranking is part of our commitment to ensure that every candidate knows exactly how they performed in relation to others. It is not just about the score you got, but how you stand nationally among almost two million candidates,” Prof. Oloyede stated.
With this initiative, a candidate who scores 280, for instance, can now see whether that score places them in the top one percent, top ten percent, or lower brackets of the entire 2025 UTME candidate pool. This could prove useful for institutions seeking to admit only top-tier applicants in certain courses, and it also allows students to assess their competitiveness more realistically.
While the innovation has been largely praised as a step in the right direction, some education analysts have urged JAMB to ensure that the ranking methodology is clearly explained to avoid misinterpretation by candidates and institutions. Others have called for similar transparency in other stages of the admission process, including the Post-UTME screenings and the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS).
The 2025 UTME saw 1,905,539 registered candidates sitting for the examination across JAMB-accredited CBT centers nationwide. With the national ranking now added to their result slips, candidates are expected to make more informed decisions when applying for admission into Nigeria’s universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education.
