UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN UNIFIED TERTIARY MATRICULATION EXAMINATION IN DELTA AND EDO STATES, NIGERIA

This study analyzed university students’ performance in Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination in Delta and Edo states of Nigeria with a view to determining whether the performance of university students in UTME is dependent on their gender and faculty of study. Two research questions were raised and two hypotheses were formulated and tested. The study had adopted the ex-post facto design. The population of the study comprised the students in all universities in Delta and Edo states that took the UTME in 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 academic sessions and a sample size of 6000 students from three universities was selected through stratified random sampling technique. Instrument used for this study was students’ records containing UTME scores. The data collected were analyzed using statistical mean, z ? test and one way analysis of variance. The findings from the analysis of data showed that a not significant difference of 0.30 was established between the performance of male and female university students in UTME and a significant difference was established between the performances of students in different faculties, since the calculated F- ratio of 489.89 was greater than table values of 2.60 at 0.05 level of significance. Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that the performance of university students in UTME is not dependent on their gender. Furthermore, it was concluded that performance of students varied from faculty to faculty. On the basis of this conclusion, it was recommended that the current practice of maintaining different bench mark or cut- off points for different departments/ faculties should be maintained and the same cut off point for both male and female university students should also be maintained.