Medicine points remain high despite changes

DESPITE all applicants with at least 480 Leaving Certificate points being eligible for consideration for places on medicine degree courses, no student with less than 520 points has been offered a place today. Under a new selection system used by the five medical schools, exam results have been combined with scores from an aptitude test to help fill the almost 400 places available for Irish and EU students.

But the points score range of successful applicants shows that only those with mostly higher level As have gained entry.

While those with lower points scores may get a place in Round 2 next week or at a later stage, the statistics may raise questions about the success of the new scheme, aimed at reducing pressure on school leavers to get near-perfect Leaving Certificate grades to study to become doctors.

However, a statement on behalf of the five colleges where medicine is offered to undergraduates said the system has had a number of positive outcomes, with further analysis to be undertaken in the coming weeks.

"Early indications are that the new selection process has widened access to medicine," they said.

It is notable that, this year for the first time possibly in decades, an almost perfectly even number of male and female applicants are being offered places on medicine degrees. The vast majority of places are also being offered to those who sat the Leaving Certificate for the first time this June.

Previously, females dominated undergraduate medicine places at the five medical schools – representing 60% of last year's intake, for example – largely due to the better results achieved by girls in the Leaving Certificate.

Up to two in five places were taken in the past by applicants who had repeated the Leaving Certificate, but the colleges said that 83% of those being offered undergraduate medicine today sat the exam for the first time this summer.

Four universities – University College Cork, University College Dublin, National University of Ireland Galway and Trinity College Dublin – offer undergraduate medicine entry, along with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

They are this morning offering places to applicants who scored between 520 and the maximum 600 Leaving Certificate points counted for selecting the majority of entrants to courses offered through the Central Applications Office (CAO).

Their grades were combined with scores in the HPAT-Ireland test sat by around 3,000 people in February, with successful applicants having a range of scores between 153 and 225 out of 300. Those offered places today had combined scores of between 713 and 779.

Based on performances of all CAO applicants, only about half of this year's Leaving Certificate students with more than 480 points scored 520 points or more, although the likelihood is that most of the 3,120 people listing medicine as their first preference will have received above-average results last week anyway.

The revised entry process for undergraduate medicine helped prompt a rise of 18% to more than 12,000 applicants listing medicine on their CAO forms and 3,120 – up 10% on last year – listing it as their top course.

The changes to entry selection for medical school follow the 2006 report of an expert group tasked with finding the best way to choose undergraduate students by reducing the pressure on school leavers to get 550 or more points in the Leaving Certificate. The new scheme comes more than seven years after Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats promised in the 2002 Programme for Government to make such changes for medicine and other high-points healthcare profession courses.

Last year, the Round 1 requirements for the five medical schools were 570 or more and the lowest-scoring students accepted into the courses when all places were filled had 565 points.

The revised entry scheme reduces the advantage of having more than 550 points, as one point is added to the combined score for every five Leaving Certificate points, meaning a top-marks 600-point student gets a score of 560 plus their HPAT score for comparison with other medicine applicants.