Our team of guidance counsellors staffing the Irish Times help desk at irishtimes.com/education have been busy answering questions from concerned Leaving Cert graduates. The team are online over the coming days to answer queries. Here are some of main themes emerging.
Will CAO points requirements for my chosen course go up this year?
The factors which determine CAO points requirement for any course come down ultimately to supply and demand. Last year’s points for each course were determined by the last student to secure a place. This in itself was determined by the profile of CAO scores of those seeking places on the programme and the number of places available on the course. In summary, it is impossible to say for sure until offers issue next Thursday.
If grades are the same as last year, surely CAO points won’t go up?
The CAO publishes data in March and June showing the exact numbers of applicants for each discipline or area of study; thus it changes from year to year. Where there is a growing interest among applicants in a programme, this will inevitably push up the points requirements and vice versa.
Will points for medicine go down due to extra places being added this year?
Just over 1,000 additional places are being added to high-demand courses this year. That includes 60 extra medical places across the five undergraduate schools and postgraduate programme.
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How the increase or decrease in demand for any of these courses interacts with the numbers of places on offer will only become evident when the CAO makes its round one offers to applicants next Thursday.
I can’t find anywhere to live. Should I defer my course or change my plans?
There is huge anxiety among this year’s Leaving Certs in attempting to secure a place to live adjacent to the college they now expect to attend.
Our help desk received a number of queries from students in Europe who have applied to the CAO in growing numbers since Brexit effectively locked them out of the UK college market. They, too, are finding it impossible to book accommodation.
The nightmare scenario for many is getting an offer of their dream course next Thursday and having to give it up by the cut-off date for acceptance of places due to not being able to find anywhere to live.
Our advice is to contact the college where you’re hoping to study. They have a database of homeowners offering rooms to rent and may be able to support in other ways. You can also apply to defer. In this case, contact the university or college as soon as your offer arrives, not the CAO. In most cases, your place will be held until next year. However, there is no guarantee the housing situation will be any better this time next year.
Am I entitled to concessionary points?
Our help desk received numerous calls from CAO applicants who have qualified for access programmes such as Dare (for those with a designated disability), Hear (for economically disadvantaged) or having qualified for an elite scholarship programme which involves a potential reduction in CAO points requirements. They wanted to know how their concession would interact with the offer of places.
In the case of any concessionary places, the decision is made according to the policy as applied by each individual college and, in many cases, individual faculty departments. The same applies to elite sports scholarships. There is no one-size-fits-all rule around such concessions. What is clear is that the admissions officers of each college will communicate to the CAO before round one offers (and in each subsequent round) whom to offer a place on a programme to. The decision-making process takes place within the college itself and is not an automated process within the CAO.
What is going to happen with Leaving Cert grades next year?
Minister for Education Norma Foley’s statement that the amendments to the assessment process within the Leaving Cert, introduced in 2021 for Covid reasons, will be extended further into 2023, gave rise to a number of calls to our help desk from existing sixth-year students seeking details of how this may affect grades.
All we can state at this stage is that Ms Foley is determined that there will be no “cliff edge” for any specific year group of Leaving Cert students, and that the range of questions to be answered in the Leaving Cert exams will not revert to pre-Covid-19 patterns in one fell swoop.
Similarly, in terms of the overall inflated grades given to 2022 candidates, there will be no overnight withdrawal of those additional marks, which would put the affected students at a disadvantage to applicants holding inflated points from 2020 and 2021 and, now, 2022.
There will, according to the Minister, be a gentle glide-path back to pre-2019 patterns of results over a number of years. On balance, most see this as the best approach, given that the current pattern of grade inflation is not sustainable in the long term.
