{"id":72377,"date":"2025-08-06T21:06:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=72377"},"modified":"2025-08-06T21:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:06:06","slug":"jamb-sets-strict-criteria-for-under-16-university-applicants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/08\/06\/jamb-sets-strict-criteria-for-under-16-university-applicants\/","title":{"rendered":"JAMB Sets Strict Criteria for Under-16 University Applicants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Huldah Shado<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has introduced stricter screening measures for candidates under the age of 16 seeking university admission for the 2025\/2026 academic session.<\/p>\n<p>JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, made the announcement during a virtual meeting with vice chancellors and heads of admissions on Wednesday in Abuja.<\/p>\n<p>He emphasized that the board would no longer tolerate what he described as the &#8220;academic abuse&#8221; of admitting minors who are not emotionally and psychologically prepared for university life.<\/p>\n<p>Although the minimum age for admission into Nigerian universities remains 16, Oloyede noted that underage candidates would only be considered if they display exceptional academic brilliance and maturity.<\/p>\n<p>He stressed that the policy is not only about age but also about emotional readiness, academic capacity, and long-term well-being.<\/p>\n<p>Under the new policy, candidates under 16 must score at least 320 out of 400 in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), attain a minimum of 80 percent in the post-UTME screening, and secure at least 80 percent in a single sitting of either WAEC or NECO, amounting to 24 out of 30 obtainable points.<\/p>\n<p>Oloyede also announced that the board would no longer accept combined results from different examination bodies, such as mixing WAEC and NECO.<\/p>\n<p>He added that science students must include Mathematics among their top subjects, while arts students must include English Language.<\/p>\n<p>The policy was earlier presented by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, at the 2025 JAMB policy meeting.<\/p>\n<p>It aims to strike a balance between cognitive maturity and academic preparedness, and to address the increasing trend of underage students gaining admission into Nigerian universities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Huldah Shado The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has introduced stricter screening measures for candidates under the age of 16 seeking university admission for the 2025\/2026 academic session. JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, made the announcement during a virtual meeting with vice chancellors and heads of admissions on Wednesday in Abuja. He emphasized [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":72378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72379,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72377\/revisions\/72379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}