No phone. No wristwatch. No biometric, no exam. The UTME is a controlled environment before it is a test, and the rules are published — most candidates just never read them.
By Clevate Editorial Team
Format check: Clevate Exam-Format Review
· updated
5 min read
Writes exam-format and revision guides for Nigerian secondary students. Checks every factual claim against the exam board’s own current published document.
Every year, some candidates lose a whole exam year before answering a single question. They arrive at the wrong centre, or with a phone in a pocket, or with a fingerprint the scanner cannot read. None of these are academic failures. All of them are avoidable, and all of the relevant rules are published in JAMB’s manual for examination officials.
Here is the short version, followed by what happens inside the hall.
The non-negotiables
The manual permits ordinary pencils as writing material — and nothing else. It states that candidates should not be allowed into the examination hall with any writing materials except ordinary pencils, and that no examination official may enter with a telephone, wristwatch, pen or other electronic device. The list of prohibited items is published in the manual and applies to candidates too.
This is stricter than most school exams, and the enforcement is not a formality. A phone in a bag that is left with a guardian is fine; a phone in a pocket is a misconduct risk. The simplest rule is to travel with nothing electronic at all.
JAMB verifies candidates biometrically at the centre, and the manual is unusually direct: biometric verification is the only mode of admitting candidates, exemption is not allowed, and there is no other attendance register. Candidates are body-scanned before verification. If a candidate cannot be verified, the instruction to officials is not to keep the hall waiting — the candidate is not admitted.
If you know your fingerprints have failed a scanner before, do not leave it to exam morning. JAMB’s FAQ says candidates with biometric abnormalities register and sit at the JAMB national headquarters in Abuja on the last day of the national calendar, with the Board facilitating travel. That is a process you start early, not a conversation you have at the gate.
The UTME runs in multiple sessions per day, and candidates are assigned to one. The manual says candidates will not be rescheduled to sessions other than the one assigned. Arriving late for your session does not move you to the afternoon; it risks the paper. Check the centre and the session on your examination notice the day before, and travel as if the start time were an hour earlier.
You log in with your registration number as the access code. Officials are required to give a short demonstration of the keyboard and mouse. The interface then works like this:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| P | Previous question |
| N | Next question |
| R | Return, if S was pressed in error |
| S then Y | Submit the examination, then confirm |
| Calculator icon | Opens the on-screen calculator |
| END EXAM | Ends the paper |
Selecting an option saves the answer automatically, and so does pressing N or P after choosing. That removes the classic paper-exam disaster of answers that never made it onto the answer sheet. It also means a mis-click is saved just as faithfully. Slow down for one second at each option; there is no undo for a wrong answer, only a change before you move on.
You cannot bring a calculator. There is an on-screen calculator available from an icon in the top right corner of the CBT interface, and officials are instructed to help candidates open it. If you have never used it, practise with a screen-based calculator rather than the one on your phone — the muscle memory is different, and the phone will not be there.
Forty seconds per question is the average, not the rule for every question. A three-pass approach is more robust than a single sweep:
Sessions fail. The manual tells technical officers to notify candidates of a new schedule before they leave the hall if a session fails, and requires daily reports to be uploaded. If your screen freezes or your session drops, stay in the hall and speak to the supervisor — leaving the centre is how a reschedulable problem becomes an unresolved one.
Confirm the centre address and your session. Charge nothing you cannot bring. Sleep. In the morning, carry only what the rules allow, arrive early enough that a queue is not a crisis, and expect the body scan and biometric check as normal parts of the process rather than obstacles.
The best preparation for the rules is one timed mock on a screen, so the interface is familiar before it is consequential. Practise the UTME shape here, or read how to train for the 180-question paper.
Every factual claim in this guide was checked against the documents below. Access dates are recorded so a later editor can tell how stale the check is.
180 questions, 120 minutes, no pause.
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