66,000 candidates battle for 9,000 admission slots

The department of Medicine and Surgery, for example, which usually admits 130 to 150 students had 11,146 applications while the Faculty of Law with an admission quota of about 200 received 6,560 applications.

Data released by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) shows that 65, 954 first choice candidates will be writing the University of Nigeria, Nsukka’s 2016/2017 academic session aptitude test.

That would generate about N330,000,000 million for an institution that charges N5,000 administrative fee per individual candidate for the test.

But the university cannot admit more than 9,000 applicants in all its programmes.

An administrative staff member at the university said “It is an impossibility to assume that all the candidates will be admitted.”

A breakdown of the data shows that the department of Medicine and Surgery, for example, which usually admits 130 to 150 students had 11,146 applications while the Faculty of Law with an admission quota of about 200 received 6,560 applications.

Last year, JAMB had in a bid to addressing this admission imbalance redistributed candidates with uncompetitive scores to other universities where they would have chances of gaining but was severely criticized by both parents and stakeholders for arbitrariness.

But JAMB had insisted the decision was based on the need to supply other universities with a number of applicants less than their capacity with more candidates.