WHAT MAKES a successful repeat student? It’s a whole year of your life and there is little point in repeating the Leaving Cert if you’re not going to do better than you did the first time round. If you’re unhappy with your CAO offer, how do you decide whether repeating is the best option for you?
Mary Dorgan, guidance counsellor with the Institute of Education, has interviewed hundreds of prospective repeat students. Knowing where you have gone wrong is invaluable, she says.
“A lot of students realise the mistakes that they have made,” Dorgan says. “Some will tell us that they copped on and began studying around February or March. Others might have had a poor fifth year and tried to catch up in sixth year but just didn’t have enough time to catch up. If they know where they went wrong, they’re unlikely to make the same mistakes twice.”
Ask yourself what you’re aiming for. Focus helps, according to Neal Martin, assistant director of the well-known seventh year programme in St Laurence College, Loughlinstown. “Students who have a clear vision of what they want tend to be very motivated and make for successful repeat students,” Martin says. If you have no idea what you want, that is likely to be part of the problem. There are interest and aptitude tests that you can take – talk to your guidance counsellor – and they can be helpful in narrowing things down.
Many students only realise what they want to do midway through sixth year, by which point it can be too late, especially if high points are needed. These students tend to be successful second time around, according to Dorgan.
Repeating immediately isn’t the best option for everyone either. “We get a lot of students who are two or three years out of school,” explains Dorgan. “Sometimes they’ve been studying something in college and come to the realisation that they want something else. They make really excellent repeat students.”
The students for whom repeating doesn’t work are those who repeat because they think there’s nothing else out there for them, according to teachers. “You need to make sure that a student isn’t repeating simply because their parents want them to,” Martin explains. “They have to want to do it for themselves.” Dorgan agrees. “The motivation to repeat can’t be coming from your parents, it has to come from you. If it doesn’t, there’s no point,” she says.
Sometimes a year out is the best choice. Post-Leaving Cert courses can be extremely beneficial as well. Repeating is not the only option available.
If you’re sure that repeating is for you, you should think carefully about where you want to spend the year. Specific courses aimed at repeat students are a good idea. You don’t have to go to a private college such as the Institute of Education, but you should try to find a school that has a class specially for repeat students.
As a repeat, your needs are different to those of a first-timer. You may want to take up new subjects or you might want to take a particular subject again. Either way, you will need to cover the whole Leaving Cert course in a single year. This is do-able in a repeat environment, but would be much more difficult in a class of sixth years.
“Repeat students are older, so they tend to be more mature,” says Martin. “They’re generally very motivated and more clued into the CAO process. That said, they can be more fragile. Many have experienced a huge disappointment and motivation can falter during the year from time to time. Teachers have to watch out for this and get the motivation back on track.”
Taking up a new subject is a common practice and can make things more interesting for students doing the exams the second time around. “Ag science can be a good option for someone who’s good at biology for example,” Dorgan says. “Medicine excepted, you can drop subjects that you passed the last time in favour of ones that are more suited to your strengths. A lot of students take up geography.”
The number of subjects is an important consideration. Six subjects done well can lead to 600 points, but if an exam goes badly, you have no fall back. Then again, you have to be careful not to overstretch yourself. “We’re constantly tweaking in the early days,” Dorgan says. “Different things suit different people.”
It’s a difficult decision but if taken for the right reasons, repeating the Leaving Cert can be a very good option. “It may seem like a long time, but it’s not three or four years wasted in college studying the wrong course,” says Martin. “It is only a year and if it means getting into the right course for you, it’s a year well spent.”
“The Leaving Cert is still the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone. Through college and work and everything, nothing really compares to the intensity of the Leaving.
“I was an engineer. I had a good job and I enjoyed my work but, over the years, I decided that it wasn’t for me long-term. Having seen my sister studying medicine, I decided that that was what I wanted to do with my life. As corny as it sounds, I wanted to do something to help people.
“My degree wasn’t good enough for the graduate entry programmes so I figured that my best option would be to do the Leaving Cert. I worked in my job until Christmas and I went up and down to the Institute of Education in Dublin for grinds. After Christmas, I quit my job and started studying full-time.
“I did the Hpat exam and applied both as a mature student and through the CAO to give myself as many options as possible. I got 169 in the Hpat which was okay. All the results went up this year. A 169 would have put me in the top 20 per cent last year.
This year I’m in the top 34 per cent.
“I studied on my own. It’s not a path I’d recommend. I did it because I had to; it was a financial decision among other things, but it was very tough. If someone was to ask my advice, I’d say you’d be better off repeating in a school, with other students. If you go to a grind school you’re cutting your workload even more.
“I sat the exam in my old school, St Jarlath’s in Tuam. I got a couple of strange looks at first but after the first few exams nobody even noticed.
“The Leaving Cert went well. I had one exam that was pretty dodgy but the rest were okay. It was a massive risk but I found out during the exams that it paid off. RCSI offered me a place as a mature student. I can’t wait to start. I’m delighted.”
“I knew I hadn’t done my best first time around. I just don’t think that I was prepared for doing the Leaving Cert at the time. The exams were difficult the first time around but they were tougher for the fact that I knew I wasn’t doing my best. At the time I was gearing myself towards medicine, but at the same time I really didn’t know what I wanted to do.
“In the end, my results weren’t as bad as I thought they were going to be, but I knew I could have done so much better. The decision to repeat in the end was easy. It just seemed like the right path for me.
“I opted to repeat in Dublin. It was completely different to what I was used to. The atmosphere in the college was as though the Leaving Cert was just around the corner. It was great for staying focused.
“Having done the Leaving Cert the first time around, I felt as though I was in the right mind to study hard. I knew the system, I knew what was likely to come up.
“Although I was aiming for medicine again and I did the Hpat exam, I was unconvinced that it was really what I wanted to do. When a friend of mine recommended biomedical science, I really liked the look of it. It’s a challenging, interesting course but it’s not as relentless as medicine.
“Doing the exams for the second time was a completely different experience. I was a lot calmer. I knew I had worked all year. Sometimes I almost found myself writing answers automatically – the information was all there on the tip of my brain. Then I was able to go home at the end of the day and figure out what grade I thought I got. That helped ease my mind and reassure me that I had done my best.
“When the results came out I was calm because I knew there was nothing I could change. The CAO offers were probably more nerve-wracking. I had 505 points and, as it turned out, biomedical science was 485 so I had points to spare. I’m delighted with my decision.”
“It’s the usual story. I ended up procrastinating. I was going to start studying after Halloween, that became Christmas and then I thought I’d settle down and focus after the mocks. No such luck. In the end there were two weeks left and that was enough to get me into the books but by then it was just way too late.
“I think there’s an element of maturity to it as well. During the summer of fifth year I was freaking out. There was no way I felt ready to do the Leaving the following year. I was keen to repeat fifth year but that wasn’t an option for me.
“I only turned 17 in April and I wouldn’t take a year out – it’d just be too unstructured – so repeating is the obvious choice. I was considering doing the year in another school. A couple, including my own in Mullingar, do repeat years.
I think I’ll go back to my own school, though. I have had a really good experience of education so far and I’d prefer not to risk that by going to a different place.
“If I get 420 points or so, I might consider going to college but I don’t think my chances are great. I have primary teaching, law and nursing down. I’d probably be repeating for teaching but we’ll see. A lot depends on the Irish.
“I suppose for some people there’s a stigma to repeating. For me it’s not like that at all. I just know I can do better. You know the way people are always wishing they could go back and change something about the past? They wish they had their time all over again. Well, with the Leaving Cert you can. You can go back, do the exam again and it’s as if the first experience never happened. I honestly think that’s a really positive thing to be able to do.”
