IT IS in many ways the best year to be sitting the Leaving Cert and seeking a college place. Fees have been abolished, making the passage through college on average about £2,000 cheaper for most students.
The numbers who sat the Leaving Cert are lower than in decades, thus raising the possibility but it is only a possibility that points may fall and it would be easier to get into college this year.
There is also a high number of college places on offer, thus underlining the fact that we have probably reached the stage where points have plateaued or may begin to fall.
This is a trend which had already started last year. In fact, it is worth looking back at the numbers who accepted a CAO/CAS college place last year 32,191. This was a big increase on the 28,459 who had accepted the previous year. The colleges had intended to fill roughly 30,000 places, but the RTCs and the DIT in particular made large numbers of offers on the first round in order to try to fill their places early; there was a higher take up than expected and the colleges overall ended up with 32,000 students.
Most of the colleges contacted by Points Race have confirmed they will be offering more or less the same number of places as last year; very few intend to increase the number of places although UL will have 80 additional places. Some, who may have over offered last year, may reduce the number slightly. But overall we can expect to have close to 32,000 places available to the 59,202 students who have applied for a CAO/CAS place this year. This means that applicants have better than a 50 per cent chance of success.
At first glance these may not look good odds; but to fill those 32,000 places, the CAO made place offers to 48,267 students, so only 14,646 applicants remained without a CAO/CAS offer. This means that 75 per cent of all applicants got an offer, thus raising the odds considerably. This came about because 15,965 students who were offered a place turned it down.
Indeed of the 14,646 outstanding applicants with no offer at all, some 7,000 had either failed the Leaving Cert or failed to meet a particular subject grade requirement, leaving just 7,559 students with basic matriculation qualifications without a college place. The situation is unlikely to much different this year. Just over 59,000 students have applied for a CAO/CAS place and around 70 per cent are likely to get a place offer whether it is the place which they want is another matter; but they will have something on offer.
POINTS TO GO DOWN?
THERE has been much speculation going on all year among Leaving Cert students that points could fall quite substantially because of the reduced numbers sitting the Leaving Cert. Caution is advisable. The differences in numbers are not huge. Last year, 62,913 students applied for a CAO/CAS place this year the figure is 59,202 leaving a gap of 3,711. This does not add up to a dramatic reduction in numbers, and it is entirely possible that points may not fall substantially.
In fact, points already fell quite substantially last year, probably as a result of the extra places offered in diploma/certificate courses in the DIT and RTCs. In some diploma/certificate the entry requirement fell by up to 30 points. Yet, at the same time the points went up for many degree courses where there was no increase in places architecture at UCD shot up by a dramatic 45 points, for example, and courses at UL experienced points increases of 25-40.
It is not inconceivable that the same trend could be evident this year, that is that points may fall but not necessarily for the more competitive high points courses. Medicine, which has only 300 places and was registering from 540 to 570 points last year, is a good example. For the points not to fall for medicine this year all you need is to have 300 students scoring 540 or above. As long as you have those 300, it is irrelevant whether there are 59,000 or 62,000 students sitting the Leaving Cert. To get meaningful reductions in points for such courses, ft would have been necessary for the brighter cohort of students to have opted for Transition Year in 1994; this may have been the case, but we do not know.
The Leaving Cert results, due to be published in The Irish Times and other newspapers on Thursday, will give us some indiction - but only an indication. In the meantime, the best policy for applicants to adopt is not to anticipate too much and to be pleasantly surprised if the wished for fall does materialise.
. NURSING
ENTRY requirements for the new university based nursing diploma are causing very considerable grief in schools. In all 13 hospitals - including the Meath, St James's, the Adelaide and St Vincent's in Dublin - are now operating the new system whereby students apply to the Nursing Applications Centre and undertake their studies partly in the hospital and partly in a nearby university or RTC. Colleges operating the system in contribution with hospitals are: UCG, which with the Western Health Board and Galway University Hospital pioneered the system; UL; DCU; Trinity College; UCD; Waterford RTC and Letterkenny RTC.
The problem is that to be eligible for the new scheme students have to meet the matriculation requirements of the National University of Ireland (NUI) for all colleges. The daft situation thus arises whereby An Bord Altranais stipulates that entry requirements for nursing are: Irish, English, maths and a science subject (which can include home economics or one of the practical subjects), but the Nursing Applications Centre insists on Irish, English, maths, a third language and a laboratory science subject (thus excluding home economics and the applied subjects).
"The advertisements specifying these requirements appeared only towards the end of the school year," says guidance counsellor, Seamus McDermott, of Beechill College, Monaghan. "But the students had made their subject choices two years previously. Many were devastated; they had set their hearts on nursing and now found that because they did not have French or another continental language, they were excluded."
Points Race has received many calls from annoyed guidance counsellors and students making a similar point. "I simply cannot understand why three languages are required for nursing in Trinity," one parent complained, "when you can study medicine there with only two languages." Some home economics teachers complained of "academic snobbery" and the negative effect which they perceive the advent of the universities in nurse training is having on home economics as a school subject. "Surely, it is one of the more relevant subjects for someone contemplating nursing", one teacher observed.
The north eastern branch of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors has written to the Departments of Health and Education and contacted An Bord Altranais and the relevant colleges. "But nobody seems to be able to tell us why the NUI matriculation requirements are being enforced in other colleges," says Mr McDermott. "You now have the ridiculous situation whereby two RTCs are operating NUI entry requirements and UL and DCU are requiring three languages from nursing students when they do not require these from any other applicant.
The branch is furious that the normal convention of giving a two year lead in to any major change in college or course entry requirements has been ignored. "It means that many students who want to do nursing have been excluded entirely," according to Mr McDermott.