Points pressure cools as more get top choice
Flurry of script checks expected over new grades
THE points race has slowed down dramatically for many of the record 52,374 students getting first-round offers from the CAO today.
More of this year’s crop of Leaving Cert students are getting one of their top three choices than ever before.
This year has also seen a huge number of courses with lower entry points than last year.
The good news for students comes after the introduction of a new exam grading and CAO points scale.
But a significant increase in the number of script checks is still expected, as pupils grapple with the new exam grading system and want to see exactly how they fared on their papers. Until now grades were mostly separated by five marks. But this year the number of grades has been reduced from 14 to eight, and grades are now separated by 10 marks.
The expectation is that this will lead to an increase in requests to view the scripts – although, ironically, it is also likely to result in a reduction in appeals for rechecks by examiners afterwards.
Meanwhile, aspiring primary teachers with high points will be angry at an anomaly involving maths in the new grading system – which could affect their eligibility for entry to their dream courses.
THE points race has slowed down dramatically as a record number of students get firstround offers from the CAO today.
More of them are getting one of their top three choices than ever before.
This year also has seen a widespread drop in entry points compared to last year and much less use of a lottery for selecting student for certain high demand courses.
One very welcome development is the sharp reduction in wild fluctuations in points required between years.
The good news for students follows the introduction of a new exam grading and CAO points scale, which also meant revised entry requirements for some courses, giving some applicants a fairer chance.
TCD vice-provost Professor Chris Morash said: “This year we have seen a bigger pool of eligible applicants coming through the system. I see this as a first step to reforming education in Ireland, and look forward to continuing to find more effective ways for students to enter third-level institutions in Ireland.”
In all, a total of 52,374 applicants are getting offers today.
The overall changes were designed to take the heat out of the chase for a college place, and there is evidence of a slow-down, with some popular course seeing a drop in points.
This is the case even in fields of study where there was an increase in demand for places this year, such as business and law.
Among the business courses where points fell were commerce in UCC down from 460 points to 455; business studies in DCU, down from 470 points to 466; business studies in UL, down from 425 points to 419; and business and management in DIT, is down from 450 to 444
However, commerce at UCD rose five points from 500 to 505, while at TCD, BESS is up from 510 to 520 and business is up from 535 to 544 points.
It is also a mixed bag in law, with some popular courses seeing a rise in points, although others have slipped.,
It is inevitable that with about 80,000 applicants in the hunt for about 50,000 places keen competition saw the points for many courses increase. Most of these increases were modest, by as little as one point with only a handful going up substantially.
Crucially, 2017 has seen a drop by about a half in the number of courses that had to use random selection to select applicants for places.
Random selection causes huge disappointment because it means that where several applicants are tied on the same points, someone loses out in a lottery for the limited number of places.
One of the goals of the new arrangements was to eliminate or minimise the incidence of random selection and clearly progress has been made.
The reforms brought about an end to the tradition of all points scores ending in multiples of five.
Now, new grades and the way they convert to points mean that students can get any score from zero to 625.
It means that instead of points for CAO courses always moving in multiples of five, any changes, whether up or down, are far more gradual, and this has had the effect of putting a check on dramatic movements in points.
The reform package also includes efforts to reduce the overall number of CAO options, as a further measure to take heat out of the points race. Currently, there are almost 1,500 individual CAO choices.
Colleges have been encouraged to introduce broader first-year programmes, such as common-entry science, with students postponing decisions on specialisation until second year or later.
UCD has reduced its entry routes from more than 90 to 39 in the past decade, and university vice-president Mark Rogers, said last night: “It is clear that students are attracted to the flexibility and choice such routes provide.”
The changes were designed to take the heat out of the chase for a college place, and there is evidence of a slow-down