The Night Before

The Night Before (The Remake of Unburning the Night Candles)

I long time ago wrote an article I titled “Unburning the Night Candles”, but unfortunately I just cannot find it anywhere this time I’m ready to publish it (for the exam-writing OAU students); so I thought of making this one to be a remake of the lost “Unburning the Night Candles”. I will however make sure this one is only similar to what’s in the lost article and not exactly what's in it; so that when I finally find it I could still publish it too (I'm sure I will find it, I’m too meticulous about everything to lose anything I write), because really, that article should be published; it’s that awesome.

The lost article was written to clear the myth of having to burn the night candles for you to qualify for excellence in your exams. Though this one is meant to talk about something like that too, but it’s not that much of standing against having to burn the night candles to excel in an exam; I just—with this—want to try making some things clearer about people making it seem as though if you don’t read all night the night before your paper, you cannot perform to your best. In fact, to my personal knowledge, the case is the other way round. Going straight to the exam halls from a sleepless night could make you perform lower than your best; and that’s in fact the situation in most cases. You can start relating this to the Efficiency Theory now, if you know Psychology.

Though it may be true that after studying all night the night before your paper, you are all charged up and full of stuff to download for your examiner, but then, there is something called “The Rhythmic Functionality of the System”; every system—no matter what kind they are respond to this rhythm in their functions. I'm saying: having so much in your head is not enough; having to express what you have in your head to the best is essential too. In terms of writing exams and preparing for one, what you have loaded has to be offloaded, rightly, and to its best (talking about bringing quickness, creativity, and correctness together), so as to open you to the best outcome. Saying that, factors that could deter you from offloading what you have loaded to its best become things to discuss; and a sleepless night before your paper is one of them. Students who wait, and the over-anxious students are the ones who always have to be up all night stressing all their senses to stay awake the night before their paper. The ones who wait for the 23^rd hour to start preparing, and when it’s just a very short time left for them to go write their paper, they start pushing the body system to hard. Too, the ones who are over-anxious are always going about thinking they have not studied enough, so they’ll keep studying till they have spent the whole night sleepless. The eyes will war all night to remain open—even when they so want to be closed—so as the rest of the senses that should be at rest through the night. Hence, they start being in the need for the rest they missed last night, even when you so need them to be efficient to their best in the exam.

Sometimes, the senses may not rush the demand for the rest you didn’t give them when they should have it, all because you are still anxious about the exam and all; but it will always tell on their effectiveness even when you feel you are alright inside-out. The human system—and any other system for that matter—is meant to follow a certain established order to function and function efficiently. If any part of this order is missed anyhow, functionality will certainly be affected. Biologically, the human system is programmed to refresh itself at its due time, if the due time is missed, it will tell, first on the functionality of the most affected part of the system, and later on the whole of the system. If you put your brain to rush just because you still have so much you have to cover to be ready for the paper you have tomorrow, it will tell on your retention and remembrance, and even on your creativity; those are some psychological stuff you should take serious if you want to excel in any exam. The body system just has to shut down when it has to, so as to be back to function even better when it is rebooted.

It will take only the smart ones to understand that burning all the candles all night the night before a paper is not the best. The smart ones prepare ahead so when the exam is nearer, when the exam is just few hours coming, they get to let the senses rest to their best. They let the brain decide on what it wants—whether to study even more or relax, they don’t push it. Be a smart one, understand what's best for your system and what can spur it into functioning to its best to drive you into the best of your performance in your exams. You will be surprised how recalling and creative you can get—all just because you gave your brain and senses—in due time—what they like to have—rest.

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Do We Really Need the Post-UTME?

Do We Really Need the Post-UTME?

I argued somewhere sometime that JAMB should be scrapped, and that argument made a lot of my listeners roar in disagreements. But let me place the argument here, just for the purpose of clarity and persistence. I say again, JAMB should be scrapped! This position is not because I have any contempt for JAMB, but because I strongly believe we do not really need JAMB when it was created, what we needed was the strengthening of the O/Level examination body—WAEC, and its functions, and same thing applies to how we started post-UTME when what we needed was to strengthen JAMB and its functions. Below are my arguments.

Firstly, Nigeria—instead of reviving what's not efficient as we expect it to be or need it to be—just always like to go about starting another one. That’s why I said JAMB was not what we needed when it was created, but because we don’t so much know how to strengthen and/or revive our institutions, hence, it seem to us like the best thing to do is start another institution when one is somewhat down or not doing enough. Another instance apart from the examination-body instance is the creation of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) when the real thing we needed to do was to strengthen the traffic department of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), and widen their functions even to the highways. But everyone in the Nigerian government just always wants to start something of their own, something that would be attached to the successes of their administration; hence, the creation of JAMB when WAEC only needed to be stronger, and starting of Post-UTME when the JAMB was supposed to be strengthened.

My second argument against JAMB, UTME and Post-UTME is: only very few countries—even in Africa—have these sorts of exams they write to qualify for admission into the higher institutions of learning. Most of the countries in the world just write application letters or some essay and send it to their choice of school and expect mails from the school telling them of whether they are admitted or not. It’s that simple! But it’s funny that our own Nigeria of over 170 million people—with over 40% of the population lacking the read-and-write skills and over 60% of them not having the higher education—would still continue making getting admission and retaining it near-impossible. Getting to the higher institutions here is like going to a bow war—you have to put beyond your all in it to win, all because the candidates must be screened to determine whether they deserve to be admitted or not, and whether they can cope or not with what the higher institutions would do to them should they eventually gain the admission. And this is where it gets even confusing, because the Nigerian government is always claiming they want to curb the rate of illiteracy in the county, but then, they are always also making policies that contradict that objective. And then, my rhetorical questions at this point are: are UTME and the Post-UTME capable of telling who deserves to be admitted? Are they capable of telling who could do well in school should they be admitted? Sincerely, my position would be: no, they aren’t!

I won't criticize UTME and Post-UTME so meanly that I forget they—especially the latter—have been able to reduce the rate of students who go on probation per session, and the rate of students who get the advice to withdraw from the school because they cannot do well in their studies; and believe me, these seem to be the biggest—if not the only—achievements the exams have obviously achieved. And to unfortunately spoil the achievements, the exams do more harm than the good they do to the country’s literacy level. There are so many students per year who get denied of admission because they couldn’t do well in the exams, but end up being gurus later on when they finally gained the admission by chance (of which I myself is a very good example). There are also students who someway somehow got to score high marks in the exams, gained admission, but couldn’t do well in the higher institution. And believe me, that’s because the exams only test 3 or 4 aspects of learning (retention, remembrance, speed and arguably how well the candidates can guess right) at the expense of the most important one the higher institutions really need—potential.

Though the exams pretend they test the potential of the candidate in relation to what they can do in the higher institution and how well they can do in the school, but they just aren’t ever testing for these, they just test who should or should not be admitted based on how high they have scored and leave the schools to use other criteria such as: who you know, how much money you have, and what other thing you can give to define if you deserve to be admitted or not. It makes the exams not needed really. The Post-UTME on its own has over the years being a source of generating revenue for the institutions; in fact more attention is paid to the revenue generating aspect of the screening process than the real thing the screening should be doing. It’s like the institutions are allowed (legally) to take advantage of the students’ urge and the need to get admitted, coupled with their ignorance of how the admission are really given; that’s why the institutions would advertise that students with certain score in the UTME exam should come apply for the Post-UTME without telling them that the course they have applied for would take more than the certain score they advertise. Institution like OAU for instance would call students with 200 scores in the UTME to come do the Post-UTME screening, but not endeavor to tell them that a person who has scored just 200 can never be admitted to study courses like Accounting, Economics, Law, Medicine and the likes of them—even if the candidate has chosen any of these. They will be asked to apply to the Post-UTME even with exploitative prices, and yet not be admitted later on as they finally get to realize they have only scored 200 but the 200 cannot get them into school.

It’s just too depressing that even the higher institutions that are supposed to be teaching against exploitations are the ones doing it the most, all in the scheme of generating revenue and screening applicants. So, do these make it seem like we really need UTME and the Post-UTME?

A counter-argument was placed against my position on Facebook where—prior to this—I have argued about why we don’t need the UTME and Post-UTME; the nice man argued that without the Post-UTME the schools would only be admitting shabby students and be producing shabby graduates. Based on the fact that the level of exam malpractices in UTME now is near zero, he argued that the exam is doing the right thing in scoring out who can be admitted and who cannot. Yes, I agree, JAMB has achieved so much when it comes to UTME and credibility; they really have, and that is commendable. But I can also argue that neither the credibility of UTME nor that of the Post-UTME is a primary determinant of the kinds of graduates the schools will produce; neither is it a guarantee that the schools are admitting the “promising” students. I believe if the O/Level exams are fostered too—just as the UTME is fostered—they will do better in defining which student deserves to be admitted or not, and how they would do in school when admitted; and in fact, they could even be used in placing the students to departments where they can do better. But then, the government is yet to figure out if they want the schools to be educating or exploiting. Come to think of it, needing to go through like three stages of exams to get into the higher institution; exams you will have to pay huge sums of money for, what effect would it have on trying to curb illiteracy in the country? This is all I thought to make me conclude we really do not need UTME or the Post-UTME. All we need to do is make WAEC and NECO better and widen their functions.

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This First Class Thing

This First Class Thing

It is arguable that no generation in education has ever witnessed the much criticisms the First Class Honors gets in this present generation, and to be projective, it doesn’t promise to not escalate. I mean, in education we are heading towards that generation when you may be shy to tell someone you graduated with a First Class—especially when it’s been a while you graduated and you are yet to figure out a thing to do with your First Class.

But if we’ll be sincere, is it fair? Is it fair how the honor we give a First Class graduate lasts but just for when they are still the freshest graduate around? Knowing that people who graduate with the First Class (especially in schools likes OAU), must have missed most part of “life” in their pursuit of the First Class, and then they enter the world after leaving school only to be novices of so many things that aren’t so related to books; things employers and investors now look for in the ones they want to be interested in.

Who needs the First Class to be a Hushpuppi? Who needs the First Class to be a Linda? Who needs the First Class to be a Dele or the Otedola? Little wonder we now have the Second Class and the Third Class graduates ending up being the bosses of most of the First Class graduates. Little wonder the First Class loses its honor just about a year or two after graduation and the holder still wanders around in search of what to do and how to fit in the social world they segregated themself from so they could get the First Class.

The devaluation of the First Class and its holder is a serious educational problem which will sooner or later definitely have a hard hit on the society, its economy and everything else; and to be blunt, the government is not noticing this problem yet; or maybe they do, and they just do what they do to many other problems they notice—nothing! If you are that First Class pursuing student, this is to let you know it’s not a bad thing you’re doing wanting to be among the very few students who will be standing tall in the apex position of their class. Like, isn’t that what education, school and examinations are for in the first instance? To discriminate the best from the rest. Just do your thing and keep chasing that which you desire. But as you do that, don’t forget to live, as what you learn from living is what paves ways for you nowadays, not necessarily what’s on your paper-certificate anymore.

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Deterioration of the Values of the Nigerian Education

Knowing Your OAU Admission Fate after Knowing Your OAU Post-UTME Result (TAGS: NAIRALAND, OAU, POSTJAMB, POSTUTME, POSTUME, SCREENING, ADMISSION, FORM, CUTOFF, CUT-OFF)

Knowing Your OAU Admission Fate after Knowing Your OAU Post-UTME Result 

By now, every true aspirant of OAU must have seen their post-UTME result. If there is any student who haven’t, then something is certainly wrong somewhere. But it must be said that yearly to abuse the norm, we have cases when everyone will see their results and some candidates won’t have a result, probably because of electrical, technical, personnel or personal errors. If you are presently finding yourself in this kind of situation, don’t panic yet, everything has solution; na human beings dey behind the systems handling everything, just seek for help immediately and do whatever you are instructed to do, it will all work out fine in the end. But for those who have been able to see their results, I want to slice out some serious information right now, just so you know this early where you are standing instead of waiting for OAU’s cutoff or admission list for several months and in the end you are not offered admission—even when you have “Eligible for Admission” on your result slip.

Now let me quickly make this clear, if you have “Not Eligible for Admission” written on your result slip, please be smart enough to start considering other options, because unless there are some unbelievable interventions, OAU is out of your hands already! Let me tell this part that most aspirants don’t like to hear too, you see, just because you have “Eligible for Admission” written on your result slip does not even mean at all that you are gaining admission, and this contributes largely to why many candidates end up wasting their good scores as many of them just sit and relax when they see “Eligible for Admission” on their result slip thinking their admission is sealed, but the truth here is that that “Eligible for Admission” thing is in fact the reason why so many students end up not gaining admission in the end, and this is because there are about 6 to 7 things that really determine who is qualified to be admitted to OAU. I will take my time to highlight and explain them all.

First of them all is that the applicant must have chosen OAU as the first choice of institution. This should not be a thing I have to mention here, but when we keep having people choosing OAU as second or third choice of institution every year, it will only mean some people are actually yet to get it that OAU will not even give you the chance to register for their post-UTME if you have not chosen them as the first choice of institution.

Second of all, any OAU aspirant must score above 200 in the UTME to even be able to register for the post-UTME at all. Again, I have to talk about this here because yearly, we get candidates who score below 200 coming to us that they want to register for the post-UTME, which also means there are always people out there who still need to be told that they can’t register for OAU post-UTME lest they have scored 200 at least in the UTME.

Thirdly (which is where it starts becoming complicated), after analyzing the O/Level results of the candidates in the five relevant subjects and basing the grade points over 50, the candidate must have at least half of the points which is 25 here. Not having this minimum grade point of 25 in the analysis of the O/Level results will deny a candidate of their admission, even when they have “Eligible for Admission” written on the slip. I bet many OAU aspirants don’t know this, that’s why many of them rant about OAU not offering them the admission they think they are qualified for.

Fourthly, whatever the candidate scores over the 50 grade points as explained above will be divided by 5, the result of that division will be added to the candidate’s post-UTME score, from which they must score the minimum of 25. Also, many candidates don’t know this, and you have no idea how much this leaves so many candidates with “Eligible for Admission” confused when they in the end aren’t offered admission.

Fifthly, in the post-UTME result, of which the overall attainable score is 40, 10 marks for each of the 4 subjects the candidate wrote in the post-UTME (which must also be the subjects they wrote in the UTME except for the Use-of-English which will be replaced with Aptitude Test), the candidate must score at least 20 of the overall attainable score.

Don’t forget that—as said above—we are adding whatever the candidate scores over 40 with the grade point they got in the analysis of the 5 relevant O/Level results divided by 5, and they must score 25 at least.

Sixthly, this is not only a requirement but also an understanding-requiring issue, and it’s the explanation of what happens when a candidate has “Eligible for Admission” on their result slip and yet they are not offered admission. Now, let me be blunt about this, as an OAU aspirant, you can smile when you check your post-UTME result and you find “Eligible for Admission” there, but don’t let your smile get too wide yet. This is because “Eligible for Admission” only means that OAU has successfully classified everyone who wrote the post-UTME into two; one of the two classes don’t deserve to be considered for admission at all and some of the other class can be considered (if they have what they should have and do what they should do and in time). I’m saying, after seeing “Eligible for Admission” on your result slip, you still have one more level to win before standing the full chance to be offered admission, I’m talking about the departmental cutoffs here. Because you are considered “Eligible for Admission” does not mean you have gotten the cutoff mark for your aspired department and that is what we are all waiting for right now—the cutoff—to help us know who is really getting the admission to the department they applied to and who is not (please click here to see the list of the departmental cutoffs used for admission last year).

Now, I have to warn you, if you have “Eligible for Admission” on your result slip and you do not meet the cutoff of your department, please don’t make the mistake of thinking OAU is automatically considering you for another department that matches your cutoff; hell no! OAU doesn’t do that. OAU does not automatically consider you for admission to a department you have not applied to. Now pay attention to how I’ve been putting the word automatically in my statements. That’s me saying though OAU does not by default starts considering you for admission to another department of lesser cutoff just because you are eligible for admission but you do not meet the cutoff of your department, however, if you do your running around and processing when you should do them, that is when you are considered for another department, and that’s the real idea behind the “Eligible for Admission”, it just makes it mean if you tried and did what you have to do, you could be admitted anyways (to another department or even yours), even when you do not meet the cutoff of your department.

This is the last stage I’m about to discuss; the stage where your admission is given actually, this is the stage when after you have been offered admission and you have accepted it, you still get screened to confirm that by credentials, you indeed are qualified to have the admission you’ve been offered. When you are found qualified is when you are finally filed and given the admission to the university in the name of the Vice-Chancellor of the university. This is the stage where the department you’ve been offered admission to screens your certificates to ascertain that you are indeed qualified for the admission. The certificates they will be screening range from your birth certificate, O/Level certificate to your UTME original result. The birth certificate (or any other relevant legal document of declaration of age) is needed to ascertain that you are 16 or above at the point of been given the admission; age lesser than 16 will make you forfeit the admission offered. The birth certificate is also needed to confirm the similarity of the age on the rest of the certificates required of you. This goes a long way in defining your graduation age. This graduation age is the age that determines whether you will be mobilized for NYSC or not. Your O/Level and UTME certificates will be screened too to ascertain that you indeed meet the subject requirements and combinations for the department you have been offered admission to, and to affirm that the certificates belong to you. Not meeting any of these requirements will make you forfeit the admission.

With everything listed here so far done meticulously, your admission is almost certain. But hey, if you have not understood any thing of all I have highlighted and explained, please don’t leave that sixth explanation without understanding it. So, please go back to that sixth explanation and be sure you get every message I’m trying to pass with it. I wish you all the best in your admission processing.

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Reading and Studying

Reading and Studying

As  students,  the  first  thing  that  comes  to  mind  as  the  birther  of  excellence  is  reading. But unfortunately, reading is but just a very tiny part of what it requires to get academic excellence.  In  fact,  reading  is  the  tiniest-tiniest  aspect  of  the  drive  towards  academic excellence. I hope you noticed I've not used the term “study” all the while? Yes, I've not; and it’s because I really want to clear the myth that reading is the primary requirement to excel in the academics.

I  tell  you  verily,  reading  is  only  an  eye  opener;  it  doesn’t  and  cannot  do  more  than opening your eyes, and when we say reading only opens the eyes, I say that to mean reading gets you informed, and  that’s all.  However,  when you are more  than informed, when  your mind  is  worked  and  stirred,  and  you  yourself  are  tasked  and  charged  to  want  to  know more, that is when we can say studying has taken over from mere reading.

Only studying charges the mind, reading cannot; reading cannot get beyond opening the eyes,  but  it  is  studying  that  opens  the  mind  and  does  more  to  it  than  reading  can  do.  In fact,  you  can  read  a  thing  this  minute  and  forget  about  it  the  same  minute  you  read  it; that's  how  much  reading  is  never  that  connected  with  the  mind.  I’ve not written this to cause any misconception of the terms "reading" and "studying", but rather to stir your mind to  knowing  the  difference  between  the  two;  as  well  as  knowing  what  you  are  doing  really when you’ve gotten your eyes on some letters, words or images. As a student of higher learning—for instance, so much more is expected of you than just having your eyes opened; the mind has to open too, to follow the eyes opening. And that—in fact—is when we can be referred to as educated; and that’s very far beyond being literate.  Getting  academic  excellence  apart  now,  being  a  student  is  not  complete  lest  there  is studying.  Do we even need to go over that?  Like, is it not very  obvious  already,  that studying is what you do when you are a student—that’s your occupation!

The  bottom-line  is:  when  you  aim  to  excel,  there  has  to  be  preparation,  and  your preparation has to be studying via all means, and not just reading. Reading is too not-that-connected-with-the-mind to help you excel.

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Blasting OAU Post-UTME (TAGS: OAU, NAIRALAND, POSTUTME, POST JAMB, POST UTME, POSTJAMB, IFE, SCREENING, FORM, ADMISSION, TUTORIAL)

Blasting OAU Post-UTME

This is a kind of article I write every time OAU Post-UTME is forthcoming—which is always around this time of the year. I write this kind of article just so it helps someone prepare for the exam. Even now that Covid-19 his holding everything down this year, it’d feel somehow if this article is not published, as it’s an annual culture already. But all well and good, it’s still okay that there will soon be the time when the applicants of OAU will be writing the Post-UTME eventually, and they will be needing the REAL clues on how to REALLY blast OAU Post-UTME.

Talking of blasting OAU Post-UTME, you know, it sounds funny to me that almost everyone of the candidates are always thinking they are capable of blasting OAU Post-UTME like it’s not even an exam—courtesy all the past questions on OAU Post-UTME they have tackled and trashed. They think OAU Post-UTME is the simplest in the world, because all the questions asked are questions that are very easy to relate to. Even the tutors too, and the past questions, they are always making their students and readers (respectively) feel too confident over “blasting” the Post-UTME. But in the end, after the results are released, the news is always the same: “oh, there is mass failure”, and I'm always like, shut up! You failed! That should be the concern, not how many people failed. Forgive my bluntness, but that’s the truth. No matter how much “mass failure” we have, there must be people who indeed blasted the Post-UTME; why can’t you be one of those people? That’s the question I ask candidates who give excuses to justifier their failure.

Now, though I may not be able to help you find answers to the question of why a person can fail the Post-UTME, but I can spur you to thinking your way to finding the answers to the question. This is what I tell my students I tutor in preparation for the OAU Post-UTME before getting deeper in the tutoring; I tell them OAU does not place you under her Post-UTME just to test if you know a thing or not; OAU knows you know something. If you do not know something then you wouldn’t have passed the UTME to be qualified for the Post-UTME. This is it, no matter how you passed the UTME to qualify to write OAU Post-UTME, you couldn’t have passed it if you were a total numskull. Even if na cheat you cheat to pass the UTME, it must be you cheated your cheating with sense, and that’s almost what testing you with UTME is all about—wanting to know if you have what it takes to be in a higher institution. It’s JAMB’s job to test you—with the UTME—if you know the things that’ll prove that you are worthy of being in a higher institution, but it’s OAU’s job to test you—with the Post-UTME—if you are worthy of being in OAU. This makes OAU concern herself in testing how certain you would still be of what you know if you were placed in a situation that would confuse you on what you know.

Let me be practical so you understand this better. JAMB—via the UTME—tests if you know a thing; that’s why JAMB can ask in the UTME questions like “As used in the sentence above, what does trick mean?” and provide options like: (A) deceive (B) dialogue (c) communicate (D) all of the above. But OAU only concerns herself with testing your certainty of what you know, that’s why they can ask in the Post-UTME questions like “Which of these is correctly spelt?” and provide options like: (A) manouvre (B) manouver (C) maneuver (D) maneuvre. This kind of question is not testing if you know how to spell maneuver, it’s rather testing if you can still know how to spell maneuver even when you are distracted. And believe me, if I had not stated the correct spelling of maneuver after asking the question, the tendencies are high you would have chosen the wrong option if you were left to answer the question above—even though you are so familiar with the word maneuver. This is why many of the OAU Post-UTME candidates fail the exam woefully—they are always thinking the exam is more or less like any other exam; but the reality is: OAU's Post-UTME is not just any exam, it’s the exam that will prove to you that everything you think you know are not really known—if you are not careful.

Mentioning the word ‘careful’ makes it necessary that I also mention that when it comes to OAU Post-UTME, the next thing after knowing a thing is being careful when you are called to present what you know. If you are not careful with OAU Post-UTME, yours truly, you will be trashed! You will be trashed no matter how brilliant and expert-at-guessing-right you are.

Now, how do you avoid being overconfident and yet falling into OAU’s Post-UTME mousetrap? Simple! Don’t let the cheese on the trap trip you. What’s the cheese? The cheese is how OAU makes her Post-UTME questions look so cheap and yet people who fall for it fail the cheap questions woefully. This has always been my advice to OAU Post-UTME candidates: be prepared for whatever, be informed by all means, and be careful when it is just you and the tricky questions and options with the very short flying time allocated to you to attempt the questions. People who ace the Post-UTME are aware of these things, that’s why they score unbelievably high in the exam. You can score high too, just know what you are doing, and avoid being carried away by your over-sized confident over blasting the Post-UTME; It’s as simple as that.

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What the Blogs are Saying About Post-UTME (TAGS: OAU, POST-UTME, NAIRALAND, POSTUTME, POST UTME, POST JAMB, UTME, JAMB, ADMISSION, OAU ASPIRANT, OAU ASPIRANTS, DIRECT ENTRY, DE)

What the Blogs are Saying About Post-UTME

I’ve been receiving calls and messages from jambites and parents to talk about what they heard/read about the 2020/2021 Post-UTME; this is ignited by what they are seeing on the internet about schools already selling their Post-UTME form or something like that. Which is why this blog has to be published to explain how information like this get on the internet, and to also tell the facts about the 2020/2021 session Post-UTME.

Let me state it clearly that no school anywhere in Nigeria is selling their Post-UTME form as at this month. The private schools—because many of them have managed to continue their academic session online—might be planning on their post-UTME already, but they are not selling yet. And talking about the sales of Post-UTME forms, it can’t even be the government schools that are right now on almost 100% shutdown. So in straighter words: no federal or state higher educational institution is selling any Post-UTME form right now. There might be planning on how it’s going to be conducted, but no, they are not selling the forms yet. The authorities of OAU for instance are already making plans on how the Post-UTME would be conducted, but that doesn’t mean they are already selling the forms or they are even ready to conduct the screening anytime soon.

These information about admission processing you see on many of these lazy bloggers’ websites are mostly write-ups lifted from somebody else’s website (they come on here too to lift write-ups), and most of the times they lift these write-ups, they really don’t have the full details on the information in the write-ups. Also, sometimes, these information you see on their platforms can also be their own old posts they just have to publish or promote again just for clouts or to generate large number of click-views for their website. It wouldn’t matter whether the information they are passing is correct with time, so long it is what people need and want to read something about, they just publish it.

So when you read these write-ups and adverts—especially about admission processing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels on the internet, the first thing you want to know is, who published this information? The list of educational bloggers you can trust for original and prompt admission information is very short. So be careful so you are not misled or caused to panic over what’s not even there. The team of Pathfinders Edu Consultancy wishes you the best of luck in your endeavors. Have a good week.

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Why Has OAU Not Verified Your Evaluated Transcripts? (TAGS: NAIRALAND, GOOGLE, OAU, VERIFICATION, ETX, PG, PG COLLEGE, WES, IQAS, SAQA)

Why Has OAU Not Verified Your Evaluated Transcripts?

If it is true that employers do send request for verification of certificates or/and results to schools to confirm that the documents are genuine before they give employment or before they staff an employed person, then I'm wondering how many people would have lost so many opportunities just because OAU is their school and the school refuses to attend to their verification for months, years, or even never attend to it. I say this because I’ve seen how alumni of OAU whose transcripts have been evaluated, and the evaluation body has sent a request to OAU to verify the evaluation, but OAU refuses to respond to the request because the concerned alumnus or institution has not done something the school requires of them—the requirement that would not be communicated to them.

What amuses me about this is how the verification process is supposed to be the simplest thing to do, as it’s just a matter of sending a mail or stamping some papers, and how the school and her staffs are making it look like it’s the most impossible thing to do. I have the thought that this is happening because of two things: OAU is very backward when it comes to communicating with her students and alumni, and the staffs are mostly people who are not orientated on the importance of every document and the need to attend to any one document that needs to be attended to as at when it needs to be attended to. In fact apart from the analogue style of administration and secretariat that OAU is stuck with, the two factors mentioned up there are two more problems delaying everything that has to do with documents processing in OAU—any document at all.

Well, to us at PEC, we believe every problem caused by anybody or any institution can be solved by somebody somehow, and we always like to be the team solving any OAU-related document problem you may be having. Contact us on +2348139534187 today so we get on relieving you of the stress; this is what we do.

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The 20/21 Admission and the 21/20 Admission: What Might End Up Happening (TAGS: NAIRALAND, OAU, OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY, ADMISSION, JAMB, POST-JAMB, POST JAMB, UTME, POST-UTME, POST UTME, GOOGLE, UNIVERSITY IFE, OAU IFE, SCREENING, FORM)

The 20/21 Admission and the 21/20 Admission: What Might End Up Happening

Time after time, our higher educational institutions’ academic calendar collectively (as a country) experiences some kind of shock that would define what would happen to the admission processes of the current session or the next session, and also the time such admission processes would happen, and how they would happen; a good example of this shock is the incessant ASUU strike that’s always popping up all of a sudden. The shock becomes oftener when it’s all pinned down to some particular schools in Nigeria, and when it is finally pinned down to OAU, such shock cannot not be expected almost every session. But this time around, it can be said that what caused the shock in the education system is understandable—the power of a pandemic is a serious power. 

But after the pandemic has taken over one semester from the higher institutions and still counting, should the schools be called to resume anytime soon and the admission session activated again after it has been deactivated just about immediately after JAMB conducted the 2020/2021 UTME, what would happen to the admission session and possibly the one coming after it? What would happen to the admission seekers and their admissions? Here is what my 10 years in the educational consultancy services can help me predict, and what my experience that’s peculiar to OAU can help me predict about what would happen to 2020/21 admission session and also likely to affect the 2021/2022 admission session.

By now, it is safe to start thinking—should the school resume anytime this year—most higher institution will end up not conducting the Post-UTME on their applicants in form of a test; they would only screen and analyze the candidates’ credentials and results and offer them admission based on the result of the analysis or deny them of it. The reason for these would be because the applicants have been out of academic activities for a very long time, and the psychological part of education frowns against conducting some sort of promotional test on any student that has been switched off from the processes of learning the needs for such promotional test for a very long time. So the schools would have to wait for a while after resumption (if they really want to conduct a test by all means, so the candidates can recuperate), or they would just go ahead and employ other means of offering admission based on the credentials the applicants already possess.

When such case described above is pinned down to OAU, it’s most likely that OAU will make the applicants pay for the Post-UTME screening and just analyze their papers and conduct their admission selections based on that, OAU has done this a couple of times in the past few years, and it is always because of the fact that the school is still lagging behind with one whole academic session from the series of long strikes that happened in 2007 and 2013/2014. In fact, OAU just started the 2019/2020 session when schools had to shut down for Covid-19, and the 2020/2021 admission process was ripe enough for schools to start working on them. Contrary to what many people would think, OAU will not cancel a whole session just to fix the gap between the chronological year and the admission year they are on (i.e. We are in the ending parts of 2020 but the school is just starting the 19/20 session), OAU is not used to canceling sessions or merging two sessions, they just keep running the sessions no matter how far behind they are with the chronological years and with the JAMB’s admission calendar.

When OAU eventually resumes from the pandemic break, let’s not expect the cancelling of the 2020/2021 admission or the 2021/2022 session, or the merger of any of the two sessions, or the refusal to accept admission applications for 2021/2020 session, but we should expect a very fast session anytime OAU is back to it, as students wouldn’t like to take anything slow when academic activities eventually resumes, neither would the school be willing to slow down on anything—at least for a while after resumption. But let’s not expect a Post-UTME (in written form) for the 2020/2021 applicants. This can only mean admission for this mentioned session is just going to have to be a real rush as most applicants have the standard O/Level results and the high UTME scores that inflate will their total score, so let us expect high departmental cutoff points for the 2020/2021 admission session as the school’s way to drop as many people as possible, and a thorough and competitive admission processing too. God help us all. 

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What Really Happened to Your OAU Documents You Paid for on ETX (TAGS: NAIRALAND, GOOGLE, OAU,TRANSCRIPTS, ETX, OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY, WES, IQAS, CGFNS, PROFESSIONAL TRANSCRIPTS, EVALUATION, VERIFICATION)

What Really Happened to Your OAU Documents You Paid for on ETX

The past two years have been the greatest years of Nigerians requesting for their documents from their higher education institutions for emigration purposes. I know this because most of the educational jobs myself and my teammates at PEC have done in the last two years have been mostly on processing transcripts, stamped certificates to be sent to an evaluation body abroad, Proof of Proficiency in English and verification letter that are needed abroad—in Canada especially, and to WES most especially. So we know how seriously people are needing their documents, and how their schools are giving them problems, and how the problems become even more serious when the school is OAU. Believe me, we know all these; it’s our hustle we’ve been doing since 2010 and we can compare how it was from 2010 to 2017 to how it has been from 2018 to 2020.

Covid-19 was in fact only able to reduce how people urge for their documents from their schools only for about two or three months: February, March and April, and everyone has been slowly coming back to needing their documents for emigration purposes again--especially the people in the health works who the pandemic has been making countries easing entrance for them. But sadly, it’s still going to be the same stories and the same problems they encountered with OAU and ETX on their documents before the pandemic that they would still encounter now, even now that the pandemic has made a lot of organizations find digital ways to deliver their services and even better.

As an alumnus of OAU, when you request for your transcripts via ETX, and months and forever after you have paid for such service, your transcripts are not delivered to where you need them, ETX does not get back to you on what’s happening, and you are just left to forget about the request because you don’t even have the time to come down to OAU for such thing. But hello, instead of forgetting about it, the questions you should want to find answers to is: what really happened to your documents? Why were they not delivered to where you needed them? Why is it taking too long if they are going to be delivered? Why is ETX not communicating with you about it? Should getting your transcripts from your school be that difficult since the transcripts are only the furnished, vetted and addressed version of all your results while at the school and the school is supposed to always have your results no matter what? Answer to these questions will be provided now.

If you have requested for your OAU transcripts on ETX for over two months now and it’s yet to be delivered, just know it’s most likely to not be delivered ever! By the way, if you don’t know what ETX is and why you have to request for your transcripts through them, here is an insight: OAU stopped dealing transcripts with the individual alumnus around 2017, a startup company called ETX took the deal to be the middle agent between the school and their alumni, and since then, any transcripts collected without the involvement of ETX is most definitely not a legit document and might encounter some problems where you need them. The core functions of ETX here are: to take your transcripts requests/orders and money, take your application to the school’s Exams and Records; from here ETX is going to be out of the process till your transcripts are ready to be sent. It’s now left to the Exams and Records to find your files, get your results, furnish them to transcripts, address them, get them stamped and singed by the right authorities and deliver it back to ETX. Here is where ETX resumes back to the process, and it’s only to send the documents to the receiver’s address you have provided when you made your order, either by courier or by email.

Basically, that’s what transcripts processing in OAU should entail, and if the people involved in these processes know what they are doing, all these should not take more than one to two weeks. But almost always, along all these stages mentioned in processing a transcript, things go wrong or get complicated and everything just stops, and—because ETX are the people you paid to and also because they don’t really communicate with their clients on what’s really happening or tell the clients the truth when they eventually communicate—everyone just tends to blame ETX for the problems their transcripts processing is having, not knowing that the processing of a transcript is not even ETX’s job at all, they are just there to take your orders, report it to Exams and Records, and get your orders delivered to where you need them when Exams and Records is done making them available for delivery, and I promise you, ETX do their own part of these processes well. At least I can score them 55/100.

I will also say this emphatically, you can blame ETX for overcharging you for transcripts, you can blame them for not keeping you posted on the process of your transcripts, but you should never blame them for whatever happens to your transcripts processing, the failure of the process is always only about 2% their fault and about 40% the fault of Exams and Records and about 50% the fault of your department and about 8% the fault of the school’s ICT center. Let me fill you in. ETX report all of their transcripts order to Exams and Records and most of the reported orders don’t return to them in transcripts at all as they are supposed to. A lot of the orders die at the Exams and Records—because they can’t find your results on their platform where the senate approved results of the alumni are (the database is always crashing and they are always introducing a new one that would be almost empty). Many of the orders dies at the Exams and Records because when they can’t find your results on the database, they just leave your application in a file on their table to not be touched again.

If your application will ever be touched again and worked on, it would mean Exams and Records will have to write to your department to provide your results that would be signed by your HOD, but when the Exams and Records deliver the letters to your department, most of the departments don’t even touch these letters, and some that would touch it would work on it and stop the work on it should they encounter any problem at all (and they encounter problems most times; how can you not encounter problems in OAU?). Most of the departments will have to leave the Exams and Records waiting for your results till everyone just forgets about it.

In cases when your department touch the letter requesting for your results, work on it, and encounter a problem, they will have to write to the Computer Center too (authorized by the HOD) to provide your results from any of their old database that’s not working as a platform anymore for them (the department) to sign and take to Exams and Records. This is when a lot of transcripts processing die, because HOD will not have time to authorize such letter, and if the HOD does, the computer center will not have time to attend to it. So if you have requested for your transcripts for a while now and you are not hearing anything from ETX, your transcripts processing is either dead now or about to die, and you will need some connected people to help you pull lots of strings at most of the offices mentioned above (which by the way always involve legal payments and some illegal payments too for these strings to pull at all). These connected people must have time for this process and be really committed to it and meticulous about it (it has to be their hustle probably), and these people have to be really dependable and trustable. Now is when you know I'm trying to describe the team members of PEC to you; this is what we do… we solve problems. So contact us if you are currently experiencing issues with your transcripts processing.

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The Nearing Resumption of Higher Education Institutions

The Nearing Resumption of Higher Education Institutions

The letter from the Executives of the National Universities Commission to the Vice-Chancellors (VC’s) of the Nigerian universities talking about the preparation for the resumption of academic activities got on the internet over the weekend and it delighted everyone. Though it’s mixed up with a lot of risks, but this is really a good news. The students and the lot of us working in the education industry have been off our occupations since March 2020 and that’s really a very long time for the students to not be engaged in academic activities and for people working in academics to be off active education businesses too. So this just has to be a good news that we all can only be happy about—at least for now; we will be the dealing with the demerits later on, but but we really want to enjoy the merits for now and jubilate over them.

So as the industry of education and everyone else of us are planning to resume academic activities soon, the PEC team is wishing us well in our preparation for work—especially the applicants currently trying to seek admission to the Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) for the 2020/2021 academic session, we want to let you know that we miss being your best source of information and we are eager to get back to providing you with the fastest, best and genuine information on your admission processes at all levels of higher education including the Diploma and Pre-degree programmes, JAMB’s UTME and DE, School of Nursing programmes, Postgraduate admissions and admission for professional programmes, and to also help in facilitating your processing of your admission to these programmes. We look forward to starting work, and this time we are coming even better than we used to be, as we have spent our times off work on planning on new things to add to our services as soon as work starts, and also better ways to deliver our services to you. It can still be a great academic session, and we are ready to be part of that greatness. Please permit us to wish you a Happy Preparation for Resumption.

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OAU Admission, After the Cut Offs Then, What? (Tags: OAU, Nairaland, OAU Peeps, Admission, Cut off, Merit List, First List, UTME, Post-UTME, Screening)

OAU Admission, After the Cut Offs Then, What?

Amidst the applicants’ confusion over which one OAU is going to use for the admission—the first released Post-UTME score or the second, we waited impatiently for the OAU departmental cut offs; they came at last and here we are again—all of us consultants and applicants—waiting anxiously for the first list.

To some people, the admission list is only a list coming, to some other people, it’s much more than just a list. For instances, to the applicants who is slow or indifferent to doing a thing about enhancing their admission chances, it’s most likely to be a disappointing list—especially if they have not scored up to the cut off required of them by their proposed department. To the applicants who is smart enough to understand that gaining admission into OAU—especially to the highly competitive departments—is much more about who you know and the chances you take than it is about what you scored, it’s most likely going to be the list that’ll put their widest smiles on their faces and show them the way to join the ever-conscious-ever-articulate OAU students. 

To many of us consultants who has been paid for admission processing and “runs”, the list is either going to be the evidence of a job done completely or job done incompletely. To us at Pathfinders Edu Consultancy, the list is surely and yet again going to be another prove of integrity and the show of long-time experience in the business of admission facilitation. So, it’s not just the applicants waiting for the first list now, we all are awaiting it seriously. But now that the cut offs have been released and we are waiting for the first list to be released too (which will be sooner), what should an applicant be doing just to make sure their chances of being admitted gets higher and remains so? I'm about to do justice to that.

Year in year out, I always tell my candidates to not—because they have scored up to or more than the cut off required of them by their proposed departments—relent on their admission processing or become negligent. Hyping apart now, the moment you chose OAU in the UTME form, the moment everything that has to do with relenting and negligence in your life should divorce with you; because seriously, relenting and negligence are the major reasons why most OAU applicants don’t get admitted—even when they deserve it so much. Now, as an applicant, what should you be doing as you await the first list? Simple, don’t let your runs-person rest! Text and call them every now and then to show them how desperate you are. I know why I'm saying this. 

There are "runs" people in OAU who re-sell the slot they have sold to you to another person because the second bidder bade the highest price (this happens so much in the cases of applicants going to the highly competitive departments like Medicine, Accounting, Law and Economics). Though that does not mean they wouldn’t give the lowest bidder another slot, but it won't be the slot that will give them admission to their course of choice. I say this because I know, I’ve been doing this since 2007, so you can be sure whatever I tell on this is from experience.

Let me take advantage of this article to tell applicants who are still waiting for the first list before they start their runs that—should they not be admitted into OAU this session—they'll certainly be the cause of themselves losing the admission, not OAU. For Heaven’s sake admission processing and "runs" always start immediately after the release of the Post-UTME result (or even before it sef); so, waiting till the cut offs are released before you start making moves is the worst kind of procrastination; because by the time the cut offs are released? It’s always difficult to find a runs-man who still has a link they have not used. Even the professors and high level staffs who own the slots would have exhausted their slots. So, if you are yet to do a thing about your admission processing, it’s almost getting too late now! If you make the move right now you can still be lucky enough to be squeezed in somehow—if you can afford it. But when the first list is out before you start making a move, your chance of getting a slot is almost zero. By this, I'm telling you to be wise, fast and smart enough to take advantage of any opportunity that promises to increase your chances of being admitted. You have to be desperate and more risk-taking about your admission "runs" to be admitted to OAU—even if you have the cut off score. OAU is much more competitive than you can ever imagine. It’s always about 100,000 applicants every year and the number that’ll be admitted has since 2006 always been between 5000 and 11000 (the maximum number OAU has ever admitted in a session). That’s a very tiny portion of the applicants. So you should know—by this—that it takes much more than your score to be among the overly small number of applicants that’ll be admitted out of the so-much applicants. Now, if you are thinking of making any move, make it now before it is too late. Make a call now!

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