The Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) has made some major changes in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) for 2017.

More adjustments have however been made, and these are some of the things that will happen this year, that have never happened before:

1. No Awaiting Result

JAMB has announced that candidates who have not received their O’level results will not be able to apply or secure admission in higher institutions.

In a statement released on Tuesday, February 28, the examination body said it was part of its restructuring plan for 2017.

2. Fourth Choice

JAMB has also introduced a fourth choice of school option for candidates but would only be able to select only one government school while filling out their forms online.

3. No Choosing Of Public University

The following was also announced: The new registration platform will now be first choice, second choice, third choice and fourth choice and not most preferred, preferred etc as it was.

Candidates’ first choice can be a College, University, Innovative Enterprises Institutions or Polytechnic/Monotechnic. However, if a candidate makes a Public University his first choice, he will not have any public University to choose for 2nd, 3rd and 4th choice.

He will have on the remaining three choices, a College, a Polytechnic, Private University and IEI’S. However, candidates for the 2017 UTME can now select NCE (College) or ND (Polytechnic/ Monotechnic) as their 1st choice up to 3rd choice and the 4th IEI.

They can select the IEI (Innovative Enterprise Institution, ND) as their 1st choice up to the 4th choice, but can only pick a public university once.

4. JAMB Form Sold Late

The organizers of the major examinations in the country, including JAMB met to avoid a clash in schedules and in order to have a harmonized timetable.

An agreement was reached at the national headquarters of the Board in Abuja on Tuesday, January 24, after a meeting with National Examination Council (NECO), West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Business and Technical Examination (NABTEB) to harmonize the timetable.

This is one reason the registration is yet to begin.

5. Mock UTME

While speaking the body also announced that plans were in place for a mock UTME and this might explain the delay in beginning the sales of the examination forms. So if you are preparing, start your preparations now, so you can do well in both the mock and the real deal.

6. No Scratch Card

Speaking on the issue of scratch card, the registrar explained that one reason for the delay was due to issues the board had with sale of scratch cards.

He said that whereas candidates used to buy scratch cards to access the forms online previously, they planned to cancel that since it had been abused thoroughly.

According to Daily Trust, he said: “What we want to do is for students to pay directly to government coffers and we are working out the process of doing so to avoid the type of abuse that it has been subjected to.

“So, we want to sell directly and to make sure that candidates pay into TSA account. We have cases of students saying their scratch cards got burnt, others saying their scratch cards were swallowed by snakes or lost in an accident.”