Adams Rants

This year saw an awful lot of contradictory reporting on behalf of the Irish media who were reporting on the exams. At times it seemed as if they were merely out to scaremonger the already stressed out candidates. “CAO Points Race Not Over!” they would report and point to the fact that more candidates applied to the CAO this year than last year implying that points too would rise across the board. However as a candidate myself, I knew two things that the reporters didn’t take into account when writing their hastily put together insights into the mechanics of the college system - A) Colleges are ever-expanding - this means that while the number of applicants may have risen, the number of places to be allocated were also rising and B) It didn’t take a genius to realise that many people who were sitting the Leaving were people who had little or no intention of going to college and instead wished to take up a trade or pursue a PLC course!

I knew that these two things would result in points remaining relatively static with some courses obviously rising and some falling but todays headline in the Irish times “CAO Points continue to fall” offered false hope to a number of borderline candidates who grew ever more optimistic about the prospect of being offered their first preference course! It’s true, points fell in more courses than they rose in but competition was still fierce amongst candidates applying for business/administration courses and many courses are listed with a * following the first round offers indicating that not all candidates who had the minimum amount of points were offered a place for that course, instead finding that a random number assigned to them in February sealed their fate!

So contrary to what the media is reporting, the points race isn’t over yet! Many of the students who will not receive a college offer within the next few weeks will opt to pursue a PLC course and then apply to college next year and the trend seems to be that more and more mature students are finding their way into college meaning that next year will see what I predict to be record numbers of applicants to CAO. The third level colleges may be expanding and adding many new courses to their repertoire as each year passes, but there’s only so much expansion they can do in a year and I’m not hesitating in saying that next year could see the Points Race really get started!