2004 points requirements for entry to degree courses.

Christ almighty. Is that a pressure cooker or what? Apparently there's going to be a move to change the admissions requirements for medicine, but what about all the other related courses? They're nearly as bad.

It would be nothing short of an insult to get 570 and then not get one offer of medicine, which is what will happen to quite a few students around the country today. I wonder what's causing this inflation in the medically-orientated courses. It never used to be this bad. My theory is that the high achievers who normally went into engineering or science are avoiding them because of the bad press those courses have been getting in the last while, and instead they're opting for traditionally safer courses like the above. Or it could just be that universities are delegating more places to overseas students (traditionally students of medicine and the like), leaving less to Irish ones, because they know that then they can charge the foreign students a small fortune to study here for even one year. Or it could be something else.

I just know that I would hate to be doing my leaving cert with a view to getting into a medical course now. You would need to be nothing short of a learning machine. To get over 90% in a list of subjects that range from English to Maths is a highly unrealistic expectation of any student. Human intelligence is generally concentrated in one area, not distributed across all disciplines.

Incidentally, when I went for the interview for Pharmacy in Brighton, the professor told me that I should get a revision book for A-level chemistry and go through it before the course starts. I've been doing this, and I've noticed something. An A-level subject is supposed to be twice as in-depth as its leaving cert equivalent. It isn't. It is, at most, 30% as much again. Yet an A-level grade has, for some time, been deemed to be worth almost twice the points of its leaving cert equivalent. It's undeserved. This trend has recently been bucked by the refusal of some Irish universities to continue with the points scoring system in that regard.

When you think about it, UK students have it quite easy. They get to do any three subjects they like at a level that is not as hard as it's supposed to be and get awarded an A if they get over 80%. Contrast that with ours, where we have seven subjects (four of which are compulsory), the courses for which are pretty broad, and to get the maximum score possible for them, we have to get over 90%. No wonder our failure rates are increasing, while it's their pass rates that are on the climb.

Note to up-and-coming leaving cert students out there. Just present A-levels for points instead. You'll sail into any course you set your sights on.

Lastly, having checked out the requirements for what I got offered over on this side of the pond, I have to say fair play to Trinity. They offered me a place on a course that requires 560 points from school-leavers, so they are at least making some effort to effect an egalitarian access policy for mature students. Not like UCD, who turn their nose up at you if they find out that you've been in college before, but dropped out. Heaven forbid someone would make the all-too-common mistake of initially choosing the wrong course...