Tips for Admission into Higher Institutions in Nigeria
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
JAMB yesterday released the results of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UMTE. Our blessed children have done theirs. Now, with the UTME results, I will say that they have handed the baton to us, as they turn their attention away to prepare for their WAEC and NECO examinations. May God be with them.
I am writing this brief posting on what parents need to do with the UTME results in their hands in order to ensure their wards are admitted into our universities and other tertiary institutions without much difficulty. It is not my intention to write on university admissions in Nigeria generally. I have done that in 2006 (?) in the article, The Ten Commandments of University Admissions. Interested readers can refer to my blog.
This post, though prepared for some three yahoo discussions in Northern Nigeria, is in English for the benefit of other Nigerians who are not Hausa speaking, just in case they would be interested in it. What I will say is largely drawn from my experience in handling mass admissions for indigenes of my state when I was an adviser on Education in Bauchi and the recent efforts to secure admissions for my children in Nigerian universities.
The interest to write this advice, however was prompted by a bad experience last year. The best science student in St. Louise, Kano, a classmate of my daughter, applied to BUK last year. Her UTME score was 248. It is a catholic school. No cheating wo. She sat for the post-JAMB test after filling an online form provided by the university. Then the sad news: She didn't gain admission into the university, neither for the medicine she applied for nor for any other course due to a technical problem in processing the post-JAMB test forms. Her admission was vitiated along with that of over 3,000 applicants like her, many of them I believe excellent students too, for no fault of theirs.
When my daughter informed me of her sad case I instantly called Hadiza's father and got the details. Then I linked him with a lecturer friend at BUK. They tried but the university was adamant. Hadiza is now studying physics at Kano State University of Technology, Wudil. Wallahi, Kano has missed a fine doctor in that cool but exceptionally brilliant girl that was collecting prices in almost all subjects she was offering at St. Louise.
So parents and guardians, my first advise is take the admission of your children seriously. Don't leave it to chance or to Nigerian bureaucracy. It is a battle. Please let us fight it for our children who have read so hard, who grew lean as a result of hard work and who are yet to gain the capacity to survive the struggles for survival in Nigeria. I have been in this battle for the past ten years.
I will be very brief, giving just the important things to do.
1. Request from your child his UTME result. See what he scored. If he has anything 160 and above, depending on a number of factors, he may be admissible into a university, but even with slightly lower marks, he can gain admission into other types of tertiary institutions.
2. Weigh your chances, if need be a more inmformed person. If your ward has high scores like 240 and above, your worries may not be much, again depending on the course he applied for and the university.
3. If the scores are low, you may, depending on your assessment of chances, even need to change the course or institution he applied for, or both. Fortunately, even if your child was over ambitious in his choice, because children usually fill the forms while they are at school without consultation with their parents, you now improve his chances of admission by buying a GREEN CARD at the nearest JAMB office and making the necessary changes online. Please inquire from the JAMB office the dateline for effecting the alterations or else it may be too late. Just do it as quick as possible from the week following the one in which the result was released after taking an informed decision.
3. FIRST CHOICE of a polytechnic, College of Education or University, is what is used for admission. Hardly would any university listen to you if your child has chosen it as a second choice. From my experience, they often get annoyed with you. The list of applicants sent to the universities by JAMB is usually of the first choices of applicants only. Be very careful on this. It is a golden rule.
4. If you find out that your child is not likely to be admitted into a university, you may wish to try your luck in a polytechnic or college of education of his FIRST CHOICE. There, the cut-off points are usually much lower. This is one of the dividends of unifying the matriculation examination. Kudos to NBTE, NBCE, NUC and JAMB.
5. Also, play it safe by restricting your choices to your CATCHMENT AREA. The entire country is a catchment area for UNIABUJA. Apart from it, I don't think there is any with that wide net. Please let me be corrected on this if I am wrong. Then ABU is a catchment university for all states in Northern Nigeria. The same thing I think are UI, UNILAG and IFE to the southwest. Then other universities and institutions have their respective catchment areas in their zones and neighbouring states. If you are an indigene of Bauchi for example, BUK is not your catchment university, but UNIJOS and all universities in the former Northeast are, as well as UNIABUJA and ABU as we mentioned. Please pay attention to this golden rule too, unless you are sure that your child has the high scores that will place him on the national MERIT LIST of the institution he has applied for.
6. Once you have finalized on where the child has the best chances of admission, immediately establish a link with someone you know in the university or higher institution of his FIRST CHOICE. If you don't know anyone, please find one by taking a trip to the place and meeting with someone in the department he applied for or in the academic office. Make sure you EARN his goodwill if you want him to be picking your calls and giving you the correct information. And depending on how well you EARN that goodwill, he may even be the one calling you and intimating you on the stage of the admission process. As a Nigerian you know what I mean. Haba! A beg, me I no dey for wahala if Lamorde catch una wo. But if you have a good friend there, ah, you may not need to go that far. It could even backfire especially in Northern Nigeria.
7. Maintain a regular contact with your link. Enquire from him when the admission exercise of the university will commence. (Note that different institutions in Nigeria have different academic calendars) Disturb him. Be on his neck, until your son is through, of course softening his mind with your polite mouth and smiling pocket, if necessary.
8. For universities especially, the post-JAMB, or post-UME test as it is called, may be necessary. Don't miss it. Don't joke with it. Ensure that your ward prepares for it as he prepared for UTME and WAEC, in fact even more. The post-JAMB scores are pooled with that of the UMTE to determine the admissibility of your child. But not all universities conduct it, and hardly do polytechnics and Colleges of Education.
9. Do whatever is possible to ensure that the name of your ward appears on the first list of admitted students; otherwise get it on the second. Even with the best promises, banking on the third list, or "VC's list" as it is called, must only be the last resort for people with long legs. If you are an ordinary Nigerian, your final chance is the second list. Otherwise, better start preparing for the worst.
10. Finally, for universities that do not conduct the post-JAMB test but admit solely on the basis of UTME scores, ensure your child works hard during the first semester. If he doesn't earn at least a certain GPA aggregate, he may be withdrawn immediately the results of the first semester are out.
THE CHILD OF THE POOR
11. One can easily foresee disaster for children of the poor in this Darwinina struggle given the fact that every parent or guardian will try to press all the buttons he has to ensure that his child is admitted. I will be very frank here. Children of the poor must, first, put their trust in hard work to acquire merit. That is the reason behind the merit list.
12. If the child cannot be that meritorious, it will not be a bad idea to try his luck in less score-demanding institutions or courses. Or he may even choose to take the long route through A-levels and diplomas in order to gain admission into the university directly later.
13. State governments could be of assistance. By building a good rapport with institutions in their zones, they can easily, from my experience, gain mass admissions for their indigenes regardless of their social status. This has worked in Bauchi when I was the Adviser on Education. Following the difficulty I had with the admission of my first daughter into UNIMAID in 2003, I sought the approval of the then governor to officially seek admissions for all indigenes of Bauchi state regardless of where they stay in Nigeria, as much as I could.
I will approach a VC and say, "Sir, I have come for the admission of Bauchi State indigenes. If your total admissions this year is so and so, as our state belongs to your catchment area, we will at least be entitled to so much number of entries. Give me your JAMB list, biko, I will work on it overnight, sieve out the names of students from my state who meet your cut-off marks and meet you with it tomorrow morning."
The following morning the list will be there. Then a trick: I will remind him of a promise our governor made to build a lecture hall or hostel block for his university. I will mostly get all I requested and returned home happy. Back in Bauchi, I will usually exagerate to His Excellency the cooperation of the VC and demand that he instantly call the VC and thank him. The governor will set the machinery for redeeming his pledge, as I prepare to visit the next university.
Gladly, this effort was inherited by the Yuguda administration under the able leadership of his then Commissioner for Higher Education, Malam Bala Jibrin. I do not know much about the state of that programme now as I have lost touch with the government for quite a while now.
Other people can try it, depending on the "rules of engagement" relayed admissions on the ground.
Conclusion
The above, as I said is my advise to parents and guardians. It is a general guide because some universities ma deman for more or less. People more conversant with the admission exercises can please correct any error I might have committed, a point that I omitted, or shade more light in the comment space below.
Dedication
I dedicate this essay to Hadiza whose father was so devastated that despite his position in society he couldn't help his poor daughter. Let her concentrate on her Physics and do it to the best of her effort. God will bless it, in sha Allah.
Thank you so much.
Bauchi,
Northern Nigeria
31 March 2012
Showing posts with label university admissions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label university admissions. Show all posts
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Trivial 3. Good News from Zaria
Trivial 3
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Good News From A.B.U. Zaria
In the Western concept, doing right is not considered news. However, in Nigeria where the right is seldom done, witnessing something done the right way is delighting because it is new. In our Trivials series, I will make such experiences news to imbue us with the hope that all is not lost and to encourage those who did the right thing to sustain it and do more.
The Faculty of Medicine and the authorities of Ahmadu Bello University this year limited admission into medicine to only 127 students, including 15 direct entry students, instead of the hundreds that were annually admitted previously. The outsider may wonder what is praiseworthy here. However, to stakeholders - students, parents, lecturers and the university administration - this was an exemplary achievement, if the reader knows where we came from.
Previously, the university has tried to trim the number but failed due to Nigerian factor. In 2006 for example, its 100 level students for the course, including repeats, were more than 400. Lecturers at the faculty and elsewhere in the university have their children applying, just as do university administrators, ministers, governors and other big men and women across Nigeria. The pressure on the administration and the faculty was too much. Since the faculty is statutorily allowed to graduate only about 100 doctors annually, it had to find wayss of cutting the high figure of students from several hundreds at 100 level to the reasonably manageable figure beforemthrynreach 600 level.
The only way to do it was to devise various inconsistent ways of having many withdrawals and repeats annually. They rolled many heads, admittedly, regardless of who the students' parents or state of origin were. Lectuers can be extremely strict when they decide to. The children of ministers, vice chancellors, lecturers and commoners alike all suffered from the trauma of being withdrawn from the faculty after spending one, two, three or four years in the dreamland of doctorhood. The day results are released is usually a very dark day for hundreds of families across the country. Each would empathize with its withdrawn child that would often go into hiding, crying all week, as if the whole world has turned away from him or her.
Yes. The world has turned away from them at least at that moment. They did not know, nor wanted to be, anywhere except that dreamland. And suddenly, it is gone, after it has occupied their imaginations for years. They can only see a sea of total darkness ahead, without any sun or flowers to brighten and colour their days. They would wish they have died and became lost in the past. Now they have to return to where the started years before, sit for JAMB again and apply for another course, once more knocking at the door of the university as if they were never there before.
I have grieved along with these students for decades now and had a cause to last year arrive at the conclusion that in all Nigerian universities, Medicine, with this culture, is the worst faculty I have ever seen. I have seen just so many talents that would have read other professional courses and excel in them wasted in pursuit of medicine. They live with that pain all through their lives. Why won't they admit just close to the number they need, making sure that they pick only the best? I prayed for this to come for many years. I thought it will never arrive. Alas, it was by the corner, in Zaria at least.
Two years ago, one of the families took the faculty and the university authorities to court, accusing them of deliberately failing students in order to cut the number of graduants from the faculty. The faculty denied it and produced the examination scripts of the failed students. "See, he failed", it argued. Of course, what could the judge understand there except the red ink? Deep inside them, as men of conscience, however, the lecturers knew they got the verdict on their side, but they did not win the case. Something must be done. And, alhamdulillah, they were bold to do it.
This year they admitted only 127, meaning even with the backlog of students waiting to be axed by the red ink of the lecutures, the end is within sight. In three years to come, our children's tears would be saved as very few will be exposed to the trauma of withdrawal. This is the first good news. That somewhere in Nigeria, there was a problem and the authorities resolved to solve it. Bravo.
The second good news is the process of how the slim figure was arrived at. The faculty met and decided that only few would be admitted. It agreed, like in previous years that the admission would be based on competition among students from each admission quota. A percentage was given for distinction, one admission slot to each state of the federation - being the only truly national university, and an additional one to each state from the catchment area of the university, i.e, the 19 northern states, coming from students who completed the remedial program of the university, SBRS, Funtua, with relevant JAMB points. The lecturers tamed their passion and avoided favouring their own children or those of their colleagues from other faculties, who alone can produce the desired number of qualified candidates. Ba sani, ba sabo. They completed their job perfectly and handed over the list to admissions office at the "senate block" of the university.
At the "senate block", the noble job of the faculty was almost killed by the previous culture of adding names from who is who in the university and Nigeria. The list ballooned once again. Back to square one. The lecturers protested vehemently and threatened brimstone and fire. A meeting between the administration and the faculty representatives was convened at the Senate block. It took hours without the lecturers bulging. In the end, the administration also appreciated the pain through which the faculty has been going for decades. It agreed. The initial submission of the faculty was maintained. This is another good news. Very good news in Nigeria. Here were Nigerians in position of authority taming their passions and doing the right thing. They would have filled the slots through various corrupt practices, to money, to girl friends, to traditional rulers, to ministers and senators, and go Scot-free. But they responded to their conscience appropriately. Bravo, bravo bravo. More of this habit please and Nigeria would be a better place. We do not need more dollars in gifts, Mr. President, but only the resolve to do the right thing.
Three problems remain now. One is how parents and teachers would counse their children appropriately regarding the choice of courses and universities when they fill JAMB forms. In all our universities over 3/4 of science students apply for medicine while courses like agriculture, education and the basic sciences remain largely unapplied for. In the end, only few candidates are admitted and the rest remain unadmitted that year. This is a waste which we parents and teachers at secondary school level must stop. The lecturers at my alma mater have done their own. Let us do ours such that the hearts of our children would once more shine with hope and excellence.
Two, a gaskiya, graduating only 100 doctors per year is too small for the largest university in Africa, south of the Sahara, especially with its elaborate infrastructure at Samaru and Shika. The effort to turn the faculty into a college where it will be permitted by the Nigerian Medical Council to produce 200 doctors annually should be speeded up. The same thing must be said of the conventional universities in Jos, Maiduguri, Kano, Sokoto and Ilorin. Permission should also be given to universities of technology throughout the country to establish faculties of Medicine, as we fought hard to get it at ATBU, Bauchi. Hatching that idea and initiating the process was one my achievements as Adviser to the Governor on Education between 2003 - 2007. Mashaallah. Let these diseases and high infant, maternal and, now, paternal, mortality rates vanish from our midst, please.
The third problem is the other faculties. I would like to throw a challenge to the present Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello Uinversity. Let one of my readers please take a copy of this Trivial to him. I knew Professor Abdullahi Mustapha since 1975 when we met at the Muslim Students' Society (MSS) national annual meeting at St. Jones College, Jos. (Then Nigeria was peaceful. Muslims could hold national meetings in Christian schools. May such good days return to our land!) He came along with Ibrahim Suleiman and Usman Bugaje, then all of them graduates, to lecture us on the theme Islam and Contemporary World Ideologies. He, like many of the early MSS members, has maintained his commitment to the egalitarian principles they propagated while they were students and to which we who followed them immediately also opened our impressionable minds.
As Shata would say, tunda ka girma ka zama malam, now that he is the Vice Chancellor of that great university, can he please fight with all his energy to ensure that, as the administration did for medicine, admission into all other all courses in the univeristy is equally based on merit? With his egalitarian background and ascetic disposition. This is another opportunity to practice those principles at the university level. And I believe Abdullahi Mustapha will do it.
----------------------
The next Trivial may also be a good news, regarding CPC and Buhari which we discused in Discourse 311: Fraud, Moneybags and CPC last week. I learnt that the General has also done the right thing. I am happy. But let me finish establishing my facts first. I will be right back.
Bauchi,
4 December, 2010
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Good News From A.B.U. Zaria
In the Western concept, doing right is not considered news. However, in Nigeria where the right is seldom done, witnessing something done the right way is delighting because it is new. In our Trivials series, I will make such experiences news to imbue us with the hope that all is not lost and to encourage those who did the right thing to sustain it and do more.
The Faculty of Medicine and the authorities of Ahmadu Bello University this year limited admission into medicine to only 127 students, including 15 direct entry students, instead of the hundreds that were annually admitted previously. The outsider may wonder what is praiseworthy here. However, to stakeholders - students, parents, lecturers and the university administration - this was an exemplary achievement, if the reader knows where we came from.
Previously, the university has tried to trim the number but failed due to Nigerian factor. In 2006 for example, its 100 level students for the course, including repeats, were more than 400. Lecturers at the faculty and elsewhere in the university have their children applying, just as do university administrators, ministers, governors and other big men and women across Nigeria. The pressure on the administration and the faculty was too much. Since the faculty is statutorily allowed to graduate only about 100 doctors annually, it had to find wayss of cutting the high figure of students from several hundreds at 100 level to the reasonably manageable figure beforemthrynreach 600 level.
The only way to do it was to devise various inconsistent ways of having many withdrawals and repeats annually. They rolled many heads, admittedly, regardless of who the students' parents or state of origin were. Lectuers can be extremely strict when they decide to. The children of ministers, vice chancellors, lecturers and commoners alike all suffered from the trauma of being withdrawn from the faculty after spending one, two, three or four years in the dreamland of doctorhood. The day results are released is usually a very dark day for hundreds of families across the country. Each would empathize with its withdrawn child that would often go into hiding, crying all week, as if the whole world has turned away from him or her.
Yes. The world has turned away from them at least at that moment. They did not know, nor wanted to be, anywhere except that dreamland. And suddenly, it is gone, after it has occupied their imaginations for years. They can only see a sea of total darkness ahead, without any sun or flowers to brighten and colour their days. They would wish they have died and became lost in the past. Now they have to return to where the started years before, sit for JAMB again and apply for another course, once more knocking at the door of the university as if they were never there before.
I have grieved along with these students for decades now and had a cause to last year arrive at the conclusion that in all Nigerian universities, Medicine, with this culture, is the worst faculty I have ever seen. I have seen just so many talents that would have read other professional courses and excel in them wasted in pursuit of medicine. They live with that pain all through their lives. Why won't they admit just close to the number they need, making sure that they pick only the best? I prayed for this to come for many years. I thought it will never arrive. Alas, it was by the corner, in Zaria at least.
Two years ago, one of the families took the faculty and the university authorities to court, accusing them of deliberately failing students in order to cut the number of graduants from the faculty. The faculty denied it and produced the examination scripts of the failed students. "See, he failed", it argued. Of course, what could the judge understand there except the red ink? Deep inside them, as men of conscience, however, the lecturers knew they got the verdict on their side, but they did not win the case. Something must be done. And, alhamdulillah, they were bold to do it.
This year they admitted only 127, meaning even with the backlog of students waiting to be axed by the red ink of the lecutures, the end is within sight. In three years to come, our children's tears would be saved as very few will be exposed to the trauma of withdrawal. This is the first good news. That somewhere in Nigeria, there was a problem and the authorities resolved to solve it. Bravo.
The second good news is the process of how the slim figure was arrived at. The faculty met and decided that only few would be admitted. It agreed, like in previous years that the admission would be based on competition among students from each admission quota. A percentage was given for distinction, one admission slot to each state of the federation - being the only truly national university, and an additional one to each state from the catchment area of the university, i.e, the 19 northern states, coming from students who completed the remedial program of the university, SBRS, Funtua, with relevant JAMB points. The lecturers tamed their passion and avoided favouring their own children or those of their colleagues from other faculties, who alone can produce the desired number of qualified candidates. Ba sani, ba sabo. They completed their job perfectly and handed over the list to admissions office at the "senate block" of the university.
At the "senate block", the noble job of the faculty was almost killed by the previous culture of adding names from who is who in the university and Nigeria. The list ballooned once again. Back to square one. The lecturers protested vehemently and threatened brimstone and fire. A meeting between the administration and the faculty representatives was convened at the Senate block. It took hours without the lecturers bulging. In the end, the administration also appreciated the pain through which the faculty has been going for decades. It agreed. The initial submission of the faculty was maintained. This is another good news. Very good news in Nigeria. Here were Nigerians in position of authority taming their passions and doing the right thing. They would have filled the slots through various corrupt practices, to money, to girl friends, to traditional rulers, to ministers and senators, and go Scot-free. But they responded to their conscience appropriately. Bravo, bravo bravo. More of this habit please and Nigeria would be a better place. We do not need more dollars in gifts, Mr. President, but only the resolve to do the right thing.
Three problems remain now. One is how parents and teachers would counse their children appropriately regarding the choice of courses and universities when they fill JAMB forms. In all our universities over 3/4 of science students apply for medicine while courses like agriculture, education and the basic sciences remain largely unapplied for. In the end, only few candidates are admitted and the rest remain unadmitted that year. This is a waste which we parents and teachers at secondary school level must stop. The lecturers at my alma mater have done their own. Let us do ours such that the hearts of our children would once more shine with hope and excellence.
Two, a gaskiya, graduating only 100 doctors per year is too small for the largest university in Africa, south of the Sahara, especially with its elaborate infrastructure at Samaru and Shika. The effort to turn the faculty into a college where it will be permitted by the Nigerian Medical Council to produce 200 doctors annually should be speeded up. The same thing must be said of the conventional universities in Jos, Maiduguri, Kano, Sokoto and Ilorin. Permission should also be given to universities of technology throughout the country to establish faculties of Medicine, as we fought hard to get it at ATBU, Bauchi. Hatching that idea and initiating the process was one my achievements as Adviser to the Governor on Education between 2003 - 2007. Mashaallah. Let these diseases and high infant, maternal and, now, paternal, mortality rates vanish from our midst, please.
The third problem is the other faculties. I would like to throw a challenge to the present Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello Uinversity. Let one of my readers please take a copy of this Trivial to him. I knew Professor Abdullahi Mustapha since 1975 when we met at the Muslim Students' Society (MSS) national annual meeting at St. Jones College, Jos. (Then Nigeria was peaceful. Muslims could hold national meetings in Christian schools. May such good days return to our land!) He came along with Ibrahim Suleiman and Usman Bugaje, then all of them graduates, to lecture us on the theme Islam and Contemporary World Ideologies. He, like many of the early MSS members, has maintained his commitment to the egalitarian principles they propagated while they were students and to which we who followed them immediately also opened our impressionable minds.
As Shata would say, tunda ka girma ka zama malam, now that he is the Vice Chancellor of that great university, can he please fight with all his energy to ensure that, as the administration did for medicine, admission into all other all courses in the univeristy is equally based on merit? With his egalitarian background and ascetic disposition. This is another opportunity to practice those principles at the university level. And I believe Abdullahi Mustapha will do it.
----------------------
The next Trivial may also be a good news, regarding CPC and Buhari which we discused in Discourse 311: Fraud, Moneybags and CPC last week. I learnt that the General has also done the right thing. I am happy. But let me finish establishing my facts first. I will be right back.
Bauchi,
4 December, 2010
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