Students will face an anxious wait after getting their Leaving Cert result this year with points expected to rise in many courses.

The number of people applying the CAO this year has risen by 8.5%.

Meanwhile, around 700 people who chose to sit the 2020 written exams in November were last week offered the chance to start a course higher on their preference list this year.

That came after last year’s calculated grades system saw the class of 2020 achieving the highest results ever – up 4.4% on the year before.

   

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Gemma Lawlor, Guidance Counsellor at Tyndall College in Carlow said the 700 students moving to higher courses shouldn’t have too big an impact.

“In the scheme of things that is a relatively small number,” she said.

“If you look at the number of people who have applied to the CAO this year but there has been a rise of about 8.5% of people applying overall and I think that will impact greater.”

Leaving Cert

She said the points will only be increasing in certain courses.

“Not all colleges will be affected and certainly not all courses,” she said.

“The main courses that are restricted in the number of students they can take are courses that require clinical or laboratory space.

“You can imagine, for example, in Arts, they may have taken 500 students last year; they could be able to take 600 this year because they don’t need clinical or laboratory space for that.

“But when you’re looking at dentistry, medicine, pharmacy, veterinary – they have to have clinical placements and they also have to have laboratory space so, they can’t just say, ‘look we’ll take another 25%.’”

She said medicine is likely to be less affected than other lab-based courses as applicants also need to sit an HPAT (Health Professions Admission Test) to get in.

Worry

She encouraged students not to spend the summer worrying about their points.

“You know, if there are 250 places in medicine, there will still be 250 places in medicine and the students who performed best either over Accredited Grades or through the exams will be offered those places,” she said.

“You also have to remember that those 700 people who have been offered higher courses on their order of choice may choose to stay on the course they are on.

“They have until, I believe, Friday to decide whether they are going to take that course or not so we don’t know how many people are going to take up that offer.”

'Hard wait'

The Leaving Cert results come out on September 3rd with the first round of CAO offers due on September 7th.

“That is the hardest gap for students who have applied to the CAO this year,” she said.

“You might get your high grades in the Leaving Cert and think, ‘oh that’s great, I got into that course’ but it’s a hard wait those four days to see if you have been offered your CAO course because points probably will rise a little yes.”

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