UTME 2025: Are Science Students Really Smarter Than Other Students

Every year, as the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) releases results for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), a familiar trend emerges: Science students dominate the top scorer lists. In 2025, once again, all ten highest scorers came from the sciences, fields like Medicine, Engineering, and Physical Sciences. While many have celebrated this as proof that Science students are simply “smarter,” this narrative is both misleading and problematic.

It’s time to interrogate not just the numbers, but the deeper truths behind them.

In Nigeria, a student who chooses Science is often seen as ambitious, focused, and “serious.” Society has created a prestige bubble around science-related courses. Medicine and Engineering, in particular, are placed on pedestals. From a young age, parents proudly announce that their child is “going for MBBS.” Students in the Arts or Commercial classes, meanwhile, are often dismissed with passive derision: “She’s just doing Mass Comm” or “He wants to study Theatre Arts, he likes play too much.”

This cultural bias feeds into a larger systemic one, a system where Science is seen as the default path to academic and societal success. But is it really?

To understand why Science students consistently top UTME charts, we must first examine what the UTME actually tests, and how.

JAMB is designed as a multiple-choice exam with a heavy focus on speed, memorization, and formulaic problem-solving. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics are all structured in ways that lend themselves to this exam format. In contrast, subjects like Literature, Government, or CRS rely more on interpretation, critical analysis, and contextual thinking, skills not easily tested in 40-second-per-question speed tests.

The outcome? Science students, trained to solve problems rapidly and mechanically, are often better suited to the rigour and design of UTME. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re more intelligent, just that they’re more adapted to the system’s narrow definitions of excellence.

There’s a long-standing myth in Nigerian education that Science students are simply more intelligent than their counterparts in the Arts or Commercial tracks. But intelligence is not monolithic. It comes in many forms, analytical, emotional, creative, social, and practical.

A Literature student who can deconstruct Soyinka with poetic finesse is not less intelligent than a student who solves differential equations. A Law aspirant who argues persuasively about constitutional reform is no less gifted than a Chemistry whiz who memorizes the periodic table. But because our system lacks the tools to reward those forms of intelligence in centralized exams like UTME, we mistakenly assign them lower value.

The problem goes beyond exam structure. Science departments in secondary schools are often better funded, better staffed, and better supported. Many public schools allocate their best teachers to the sciences, sometimes at the expense of students in the Arts and Commercial departments. Nationally, there are more scholarship and funding opportunities for students pursuing science-related fields. Even JAMB itself appears skewed, universities often have more admission slots for Medicine than for History or Fine Arts combined.

What does that mean? That the dominance of Science students isn’t just about personal ability, it’s the product of an ecosystem that prioritizes their path from start to finish.

There is also the psychological factor: students in Science classes are pushed harder, monitored more closely, and often made to feel like the academic elite. This pressure, while sometimes harmful, also fosters performance. In contrast, Arts and Commercial students often fight not just the pressure to perform, but the pressure of being underestimated.

Some of the most brilliant minds in Nigerian universities are studying Sociology, Law, English, or Marketing. But they are rarely profiled, rarely interviewed, and rarely celebrated, because our national imagination sees them as side characters in a story where Medicine and Engineering are the leads.

So when Science students dominate UTME results, it is not necessarily a sign that they are smarter. It is a sign that the system is working exactly as designed, to funnel prestige, resources, and success toward one end of the academic spectrum.

If we want to create a more balanced, inclusive intellectual culture, we must begin to question this structure. We must ask: what kind of intelligence does UTME reward, and what kinds does it ignore? What does it mean that our brightest students are being shepherded into Medicine not always because they love it, but because it is the surest path to societal respect?

And more importantly, how do we start celebrating excellence in all its forms, not just the ones that fit into a four-option multiple-choice question?

In the end, the conversation shouldn’t be about whether Science students are smarter. It should be about whether we’ve built an academic system that recognizes and rewards all forms of brilliance. Until we do, the scoreboard will always look one-sided, and dangerously incomplete.