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CAO Points Pushed up by demand

THOUSANDS of students will be bitterly disappointed today as they discover that points have risen for 550 college courses according to todays Irish Independent...

A record number of applicants has pushed up CAO points virtually across the board this year.

The increase will hit students with around 350 points in particular. They would previously have hoped they had enough points to get into their top choice in today’s first round of offers.

Popular courses such as nursing and teaching – regarded as passports to secure jobs – are all harder to get into this year.

Science has unexpectedly rocketed by up to 85 points, while entry to arts courses is up in most cases.

And the introduction of a controversial aptitude test for medicine this year has thrown up dramatic results, with girls and repeat students losing out badly.

Even some of those with six A1 grades – which is the maximum 600 points in the Leaving Certificate – had failed to get into medicine.

However, others succeeded with just 520 points because, for the first time, they can combine their Leaving with the results of the Australian-devised aptitude test which all medicine applicants had to take.

As a consequence of the change, dentistry has now emerged as the toughest course to get into – up to 575 on random selection in UCC, the equivalent of five A1s and one B3 on higher level papers. In Trinity, entry went from 555 to 570 on random selection.

Despite the current plight of farming, agricultural science has also gone up, as has food science in both UCD and UCC.

The points squeeze comes just days after pupils were left disappointed by the first fall in the number of top A grades in years.

But the sharp rise in points is caused by record numbers of applicants to the CAO.

These include 2,000 more Leaving Cert students than last year and more adults, many of whom have been made redundant. Fewer applications for property- related courses and law have, however, pushed down points in those areas.

And government attempts to boost engineering have yielded disappointing results – dozens of courses will advertise vacancies in engineering on the CAO website within days.

In total, 380 honours degree courses show an increase in points while 252 are lower, 83 remain the same and the remainder are not comparable or are new courses.

Of the ordinary degree and higher certificate courses, 166 were up, 89 were down, 33 remained the same and the remainder were not directly comparable or were new.

This year, overall applications to the CAO were up 7.2pc to just under 74,000. The increase reflects what’s happening in the country due to the recession, said John McGinnity, assistant registrar at NUI Maynooth.

“More adults have applied, and want to get a qualification either because they been made redundant or see the writing on the wall,” he said.

In addition, 2,000 more Leaving Cert students applied than last year. This was partly due to the closure of other non-CAO options, such as apprenticeships.

Arts

Applications for arts were up by 1,000 to just over 10,500, or one in every seven applications. As a result, points for arts were also up. Entry points in UCD for the country's biggest arts faculty, which takes in 1,300 students every year, went from 350 to 360; while in the University of Limerick, arts went from 440 to 445.

Maynooth's arts course now has a higher entry point than NUI Galway, Cork or Dublin. A spokesman for NUIM said the university had broadened its range of subjects to 26 to include law and business and this had proven very attractive to students.

“Many students have chosen a broadly based honours degree during this downturn in the economy, which will allow graduates choose from a range of work or further study options after graduation,” he said.

Other trends from this year’s first round were:

- Nearly half the nursing courses require 400 or more points.

- A poor year for engineering with a slight decrease in applications.

- Two popular business courses – in UCD and NUIG – are down in points, but up in TCD and UCC. The CAO said last night that in round one, 46,918 of all 73,982 applicants received an offer – 63pc of total applicants – as compared with 67.6pc of all applicants in 2008.

Those who did not receive an offer included more than 4,000 who failed ordinary level maths which is needed for most courses.

The figures also show that fewer applicants got their top preferences this year compared with last year.

Of those applying for honours degrees, 26,832 applicants (76.9pc) received either their first, second or third preference as compared with 79pc in 2008.

Already this year 6,922 applicants have received offers in the small earlier Rounds A and Zero, which are mainly for mature applicants, students who deferred a place last year, and some applicants presenting with Further Education and Training Council qualifications for Post Leaving Certificate and other courses.

To date, 5,094 of these (7pc of all applicants) have accepted places.

At this time last year, 3,824 acceptances had accepted offers, representing 5.5pc of total applicants.

- John Walshe and Katherine Donnelly - The article in the Irish Independent

Personally, the fact that the CAO site is not updated constantly with news and information concerning the points situation, only adds to the stress and anxiety of our students, maybe next year they will remedy the situation.

New Masters degree in security and digital forensics

The Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown has launched a new degree course that has been inspired by the rising tide of cybercrime. 98pc of all Irish organisations have experienced incidents of cybercrime according to Silicon Republic.com

They continue to say that the programme is one of three streams in a Masters in Computing (Business Data Mining and Software Engineering are the other two) qualifying for government subsidy and has a number of free places allocated for jobseekers. Full course information is available on www.itb.ie

You can read the full article on Siliconrepublic.com

Leaving Cert Results Out Today

Fingers crossed and good luck to all Leaving Cert students who are either eagerly or anxiously awaiting their results today. There is life after the Leaving Cert!

Results are also available online from noon today at www.examinations.ie

For those who shared their thoughts on Leaving Cert.net do let us all know how you got on!

Student Helpline from the National Parents Council will be in operation at 10am on Wednesday 12th of August

Helpline Phone Number: 1800 265 165

Points calculator and further information courtesy of CAO






* Bonus points for Leaving Certificate Higher Level Mathematics will be awarded in 2008 by University of Limerick and for Liberal Arts (MI004) and Early Childhood Care and Education (MI007) at Mary Immaculate College. The Dublin Institute of Technology also awards bonus points for Mathematics and a number of science subjects in the case of the Level 8 course DT021. Applicants should refer to DIT literature for full details.

# Points for Foundation Level Mathematics will be awarded by certain institutions. Applicants should refer to the HEI literature for full details.

NCAD does not award points for Leaving Certificate or other examinations. Consult NCAD literature for details.

Accompanying conditions:

1. The six best results, in recognised subjects, in one Leaving Certificate Examination will be counted for points computation.
2. One sitting only of the Leaving Certificate Examination will be counted for points purposes.
3. In the case of certain subjects, e.g. Home Economics (General), Foundation Level Mathematics or Foundation Level Irish, some HEIs may not award the points shown above. If in any doubt, check with the Admissions Office of the appropriate HEIs.

# LCVP points awarded: Distinction - 70, Merit - 50, Pass - 30

Top 7 social networking sites our children use

Parents arrive and our teenagers leave? Sound familiar? Well it seems it applies to Twitter and Facebook also. We adults start using these sites and our children find somewhere else to hang out, according to the Times Online.


I am not so sure that the sites listed are where our teenagers are hanging out. Quite a few of the sites listed would suit a younger age group where as Twitter, Facebook, etc are for the older teenager.

Would you agree? Where do you think your children are hanging out online?

5,000 vacancies the IT sector

Yet the CAO (Central Applications Office) report the number of applicants for engineering and technology degree courses was down by 9.8pc on last year. Why is that?

According to the experts, changing the way our education system works is vital if we are to encourage young people to take up professions such as IT and engineering that will benefit our smart economy, reports Silicon Republic in their article Learning our Lesson.