Is Departmental Cut-off Mark A Factor In Admission Posting For 2016?

As JAMB has commenced the posting of candidates to schools (which can be termed provisional admissions), any curious mind will not help but wonder the criteria used for these postings.

Yes! It’s obvious that the schools you selected as your choices during JAMB registration is part of the criteria. However, in previous years, there’s what is called departmental cut-off marks for schools. 

Each school has its own cut-off mark for a particular course or department depending on the competitiveness of such course/department. For instance, you can’t expect the cut off mark for Microbiology to be the same with that of Medicine and Surgery in a school like UNIBEN or expect a course like Petroleum Engineering to be 180 ordinarily.

The question now is, does JAMB put this factor into consideration in posting candidates to the different schools? 

If yes is the answer, it means each of the tertiary institutions has to send departmental cut-off marks to JAMB which JAMB is to use to determine the candidates that qualify for a particular course in a given institution.

If that is the case, there’s tendency that JAMB will not post candidates who do not meet the required cut-off marks to study their selected courses in their choice institutions but rather may push them to other related courses/departments that can accommodate their scores in such institution. 

Another questions is, what happens if there are no other related courses/departments in such institution that can accommodate such candidate? I think your guess is as good as mine.

This may also be the reason why many candidates are yet to see their admission postings since it will apparently take additional time to plan the redistribution of candidates, who do not meet the departmental cut-off marks to study their choice courses to other related courses/departments.

I was just thinking this aloud and decided to put it in writing to know your views. So, what do you think?