Ireland

Give me a crash course in . . . Leaving Certificate results

My teenager is very stressed at the moment

GRÁINNE FALLER
Sat Aug 13 2011 - 01:00

My teenager is very stressed at the moment. Is she taking the debt crisis to heart?Possibly, but it's more likely to do with the fact that the Leaving Cert results are out on Wednesday.

Of course! So she's not alone then?Far from it. Almost 59,000 students across the country will be calling into schools to get their results. For the ones who can't face going in, the grades will be available online from noon at examinations.ie. There will be tears, happy and sad, and there will be screaming. Lots of screaming.

Why so much fuss?Well, the Leaving Cert is a very big deal when you're 17. Students can choose from 35 curricular subjects (there are also non-curricular subjects, generally languages such as Polish and Bulgarian) and the most popular by far, apart from the compulsory English, Irish and maths, are geography, French and biology. Lagging far behind are the subjects that everyone is supposed to be studying for the knowledge economy, subjects such as physics, chemistry, applied maths, Spanish, German and Japanese. In fact, the combined total of students who sat those subjects (about 28,000) is still well short of the more than 31,000 who sat biology this year.

Higher-level maths is the other thing politicians and captains of industry keep banging on about, isn't it?Yes, just 10,000 students did the honours paper in June. The exam was particularly tricky as well, which won't help matters. Then again, bonus points could entice some. Next year, higher-level maths students will get an extra 25 Central Applications Office (CAO) points for their trouble. A D3 will net 70 points rather than the usual 45, while an A1 will garner 125.

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Ah the CAO points race – the mere thought of it brings me out in hives. Will the points be up or down this year?Well, we'll find out on Monday, August 22nd when students log on to the CAO website and view their first-round offers. It's fun to guess, though. Last February the CAO published a list of what areas students were applying for at that time. Students have been able to change their minds umpteen times since then, but it's still worth a look. Pharmacy was a popular first preference, up 30 per cent on last year. First preferences for agricultural science degrees rose by 27 per cent, while science also experienced a little surge, up 6 per cent on last year. If things stay the same, we could expect to see the points for some of those courses go up. Predictably, applications for built-environment and architecture courses plummeted again, while law and arts first preferences were slightly down. Oddly, dentistry showed one of the biggest declines in first preferences, dropping by 14 per cent.

Good news for budding dentists then?Honestly? I have absolutely no idea.