Highs and lows for deferral cohort
‘I feel a bit hard done by as points for teaching shot up’
ELLEN O’Leary, 19, was left ‘shocked’ when the points for her first choice of primary teaching in DCU shot up by more than 20 points yesterday – leaving the course just out of her reach.
Ms O’Leary was one of the students who sat last year’s Leaving Cert and reapplied for the CAO this year – leaving her competing with other students for places.
Numerous courses across the country have seen their points requirement shoot up as a result of inflated grades this year.
Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, Ms O’Leary said she got an offer of her fifth choice, which is to study agricultural science in UCD and that she was happy to get an offer in the end.
‘Definitely the points did go up a lot. I got my fifth choice which obviously wasn’t the best thing ever but I was just really happy to get an offer in the end,’ she said. ‘I did look at the points and everything did go up, I do know there are a lot of people who are disappointed.’
Ms O’Leary achieved 474 points in last year’s Leaving Cert which would have comfortably given her a place in DCU for primary teaching if the points stayed the same. However, this year, the points requirement jumped 26 points to 488.
She was also ten points below primary teaching in the Marino Institute of Technology.
‘I was really shocked when I saw that [but] I kind of expected it,’ she said, adding that she feels a little hard done by.
‘I didn’t get my first preference but I’m over the moon’
CAROLYN Hulbert, 20, missed out on her first preference course by three points but she is still ‘over the moon’ about the course she got.
Ms Hulbert was one of the students from 2019’s Leaving Cert who was concerned that the inflated grades this year might cause a spike in points in the courses she wanted to do.
She had been concerned that the points would go up across all her choices and that she wouldn’t even be offered a course at all.
However, she did get her second choice which was speech and language therapy in Trinity College Dublin.
‘I am very happy. Obviously I didn’t get my first but I only missed it by three points,’ she said. Her first choice was occupational therapy in Trinity College Dublin.
‘It was kind of between the two of them when I was filling out my CAO to be honest, and I am just over the moon.
‘I think I might get that in the second round but if I do I am just going to weigh up both. I am actually very happy, I really didn’t see this happening.’
Ms Hulbert said that yesterday morning she was ‘literally crying’ because reports were coming in that points for health courses had shot up, and she admits: ‘I didn’t think I was going to get an offer.’
Ms Hulbert, from Portmarnock in Co. Dublin, earned 530 points in last year’s Leaving Cert.
She initially got an offer for a biomedical sciences course in Trinity which she accepted but she left three weeks later after realising it wasn’t for her.