2020 UTME: Admission exercise to begin August 21, says JAMB

The Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it has directed higher institutions to commence first and second choice admission exercise as from August 21, 2020.

Fabian Benjamin, JAMB’s spokesman, broke the news on Sunday while making the 2020 admission guidelines available to journalists in Abuja.

The board, however, warned institutions against advertising or selling application forms into specific programmes, nothing candidates should rather apply for such through its office.

The newly released guidelines added that application for admission into all forms of higher institutions would be solely handled by JAMB through its central admission processing system.

It also noted that institutions that violate the stipulated guidelines by the board would face appropriate sanctions.

“The first and 2nd choices admission-exercises be conducted for all institutions from August 21 2020 to a later date that would be determined by the Federal Ministry of Education and communicated to all the institutions. The uncertainties of the COVID-19 make it impossible to fix a terminal date,” the guideline read.

“All institutions are to conduct their admission-exercises within the approved schedule for 1st and second choices respectively. At the expiration of the period, any institution that failed to have conducted its admission will no longer have the candidates on its platform in CAPS.

“Policy guidelines for 2020 admission-exercises as approved by the policy meeting and the directives by the Honorable Minister of Education shall be formally communicated to the institutions on or before 15th July, 2020.”

The guideline also warned institutions against charging candidates above N2,000 as well as requesting additional data from them aside the ones provided by JAMB.

“No institution is allowed to recapture or demand any photograph or biometric data from any candidate rather, the picture and biometric of candidate supplied by JAMB should be used for the exercise to eliminate impersonation and substitution of real candidate,” it added.

The guideline also stipulates that candidates who wrote the 2020 UTME but later obtained higher qualifications either A-levels or its equivalent, could apply to convert the UTME to the DE for free.

“After successful completion and submission of the form, the candidate’s UTME registration number has letter “U” appended to it (the registration number now becomes 11 digits). For instance, the UTME registration number 25513377AD after converting to DE becomes 25513377ADU,” it read.

“Record of candidates who have converted from UTME to DE can only be accessed on CAPS with the eleven (11) digits registration number.”

The development comes about the same when JAMB also urged the Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres to strictly adhere to the COVID-19 protocols.