Syllabus
JAMB UTME Syllabus
JAMB UTME (Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination)
Every UTME candidate sits Use of English plus three subjects chosen to match the course applied for. Use of English carries 60 questions and each of the other three carries 40, giving 180 questions in two hours. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so no question is worth leaving blank.
This site covers seven subjects across three combinations: science (Use of English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry), commercial (Use of English, Mathematics, Economics, Government) and arts (Use of English, Literature in English, Government, Economics). Two deliberate limits apply. Literature in English is covered only for its general literary principles, since the prescribed texts rotate by cycle. In Government and Economics, current officeholders, current statistics and recent policy are left out, so the questions stay on settled ground a candidate can reason about rather than facts that need checking against this year source.
Use of English
60 questions- • Comprehension of passages drawn from a range of subject areas
- • Cloze passages testing vocabulary in context
- • Lexis and structure: synonyms, antonyms and word usage
- • Sentence interpretation, including idioms and figurative expressions
- • Grammar: concord, tenses, conditionals and prepositions
- • Oral forms: vowel sounds, consonant sounds and word stress
- • Emphatic stress and intonation
- • Questions on the recommended novel (not covered on this site)
Mathematics
40 questions- • Number bases, fractions, decimals and approximation
- • Indices, logarithms and surds
- • Sets, ratio, proportion, percentage and interest
- • Polynomials, factorisation, quadratic equations and variation
- • Inequalities, arithmetic and geometric progressions
- • Matrices and determinants
- • Coordinate geometry and Euclidean geometry
- • Mensuration and trigonometry
- • Differentiation and integration
- • Statistics, permutations, combinations and probability
Physics
40 questions- • Measurements, units, dimensions, scalars and vectors
- • Linear motion, projectiles and motion under gravity
- • Newton laws, momentum and equilibrium of forces
- • Work, energy, power, machines and elasticity
- • Pressure, upthrust and fluids at rest
- • Temperature, thermal expansion, heat capacity and latent heat
- • Gas laws and the kinetic theory
- • Waves, sound and light including reflection, refraction and lenses
- • Electrostatics, current electricity, magnetism and induction
- • Electronics, atomic structure and radioactivity
Literature in English
40 questions- • Literary terms: plot, theme, setting, mood, characterisation
- • Protagonist, antagonist and the foil
- • Soliloquy, aside, dramatic irony, flashback and foreshadowing
- • Figures of speech: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole
- • Oxymoron, euphemism, metonymy, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia
- • The genres: drama, prose and poetry, and their principal forms
- • Tragedy, comedy, the novel and the short story
- • Sonnet, ode, elegy, epic and ballad
- • Prosody: the couplet, quatrain, metre, blank verse and free verse
- • Appreciation of unseen prose and poetry extracts
- • Prescribed drama, prose and poetry texts (not covered on this site)
Government
40 questions- • Basic concepts: power, authority, legitimacy and sovereignty
- • The state, its attributes and forms of government
- • Unitary, federal and confederal systems
- • Presidential and parliamentary systems
- • Organs of government, separation of powers and checks and balances
- • Constitutions, constitutionalism, the rule of law and fundamental rights
- • Political parties, party systems, elections and pressure groups
- • The civil service and public corporations
- • Pre-colonial Hausa and Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo political systems
- • Colonial rule, indirect rule and Nigerian constitutional development
- • Independence, the republics and the 1999 Constitution
- • Nigeria in ECOWAS, the African Union, the United Nations and OPEC
Economics
40 questions- • Scarcity, choice, opportunity cost and the scale of preference
- • Economic systems and the price mechanism
- • Statistical tools: measures of central tendency and dispersion
- • Demand, supply, market equilibrium and price control
- • Elasticity of demand and supply
- • Consumer behaviour and the law of diminishing marginal utility
- • Factors of production, production functions and economies of scale
- • Costs, revenue and the behaviour of the firm
- • Market structures: perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition
- • Distribution theory: rent, wages, interest and profit
- • National income: concepts, measurement and its problems
- • Money, inflation, financial institutions and the capital market
- • Public finance: taxation, budgets and fiscal policy
- • International trade, the balance of payments and exchange rates
Chemistry
40 questions- • Separation of mixtures and purification techniques
- • Laws of chemical combination and the mole concept
- • Atomic structure, electron configuration and periodicity
- • Chemical bonding and intermolecular forces
- • Air, water, solubility and the kinetic theory of gases
- • Stoichiometry, concentration and volumetric analysis
- • Energy changes, rates of reaction and chemical equilibrium
- • Acids, bases, salts and hydrolysis
- • Oxidation and reduction, and electrolysis
- • Non-metals, metals, extraction and organic chemistry
How this page is sourced
The subject topic areas above are the standard UTME syllabus areas and match the questions set on this site. The official JAMB brochure could not be read directly from the network this site is built on, so the exam pattern is marked as review pending until it can be. Check the official syllabus before you rely on any single line here, particularly the recommended novel, which changes between cycles. JAMB.
Frequently asked questions
What is the JAMB UTME syllabus?
It runs to 7 sections: Use of English, Mathematics, Physics, Literature in English, Government, Economics and Chemistry. 75 named topics are listed on this page beneath them, each taken from the official syllabus rather than inferred from past papers.
How do I practise the whole JAMB UTME syllabus?
Sit a full mock first, before working through the topic list. A syllabus tells you what can be asked; it does not tell you which parts of it are costing you marks, and most candidates find that is not where they expected. There are 10 free tests for JAMB UTME here, and the sectional ones let you rebuild a single section once the full paper has shown you which one to rebuild.
Is this JAMB UTME syllabus current?
It is taken from JAMB, cited and linked at the foot of this page, rather than from another preparation site, so you can check it against the source yourself. Syllabuses do change between cycles, usually through a corrigendum to the notification rather than a fresh document, so confirm against the current notice before planning a whole revision cycle around any topic list, including this one.