An A-grade student, who scored 580 points in the Leaving Certificate, has made almost €3,000 selling his study notes online.
Cillian Fahy, who attended Gort Community School in Co Galway, took the unusual step of selling his Leaving Certificate notes on the online auction site eBay.ie to help finance his third-level education.
When the deadline passed at midnight, the enterprising student’s maths and French notes had earned him more than €1,000 each. He received €1,100 for his French notes, which helped him achieve an A2 grade, and €1,020 for his Maths notes which helped him secure an A1 grade.
His English notes sold for €271.87, his music notes for €120, his history notes for €192.50 and his Irish notes for €140 bringing the total to €2,844.37.
The 18-year-old student, who is due to start a degree in English Literature and Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin this month, said he had been toying with the idea of using the internet to sell his notes for some time and was surprised no one had thought of doing it before, as websites such as eBay.ie are so widely used by teenagers.
Now, with the economy the way it is, students need to be more resourceful and clever in finding ways to finance college, he said, adding: “I found it very hard to get work this summer which made this idea more appealing to get money for college”.
Speaking to The Irish Times, the student from New Quay in Co Clare said: "Some people suggested I photocopy my notes so I could sell multiple copies, but I think if everyone wrote the same thing they might not get as good a grade, so I opted to sell each set of notes to the highest bidder instead".
“I think people found them more valuable knowing they were unique, that no one else would have the same set”.
“Selling your notes could become an economic incentive to write good notes and have more original thought”.
James Esses, a student at Sandford Park school in Ranelagh, is also using the website to auction off his extensive notes in Business, Classical Studies, French and History, subject in which he achieved an A1 grade.
“At the moment I only have a few bids on some of my notes, but it's still early days. I thought I would chance my luck with this, but never expected it would really materialise”.