A total of 41,027 underage candidates were among the 2.03 million who registered for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.This was according to real-time data obtained from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board registration dashboard on Tuesday.
According to data available on the Board’s official website as of Monday, 62 cases of examination malpractice have been recorded so far.Recall that the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, recently reinstated the acceptable age for admission into tertiary institutions as 16 years. He emphasised that candidates below this age would not be eligible for admission, although exceptions would be made for academically gifted students.
JAMB has also clarified that underage candidates—those below 16—may be considered for admission if they demonstrate academic excellence by scoring 80 per cent or more in the UTME. Given that the examination is scored out of 400 marks, this translates to a minimum of 320.