Predicting course points

Meglamonia

Is there any possible way to give a rough prediction what will go up or down or anything that could give any indication?Just wondering

spurious

The points are all based on demand, so it depends what courses people apply for. There are no other external factors. Supply and demand.

CIARAN_BOYLE

isn't there a bonus points to students of higher level maths next year. This is likely to cause the minimum points for many courses to go up next year since there are more points available the average student will likely get more points.

QueenOfLeon

25 extra points for passing Higher Level maths, yes.

Depends really, the percentage of people doing HL in the first place is still quite small. Also, there won't be the full 25 points affecting everyone, its only if Maths will be counted as one of your top 6 for points, and even then it could only add on anything from 5-20 for some people (from what they would have got without counting maths).

Other factors are if colleges add any places to any of their courses.

Regardless, you should always fill out your CAO, not thinking of what their points will be but what your preferences of courses are

not_so_civil

Short answer is no. like the posters above said, its supply and demand so you never really know. Predictions rarely work out, some courses that were supposed to shoot up last year went down and some courses that nobody expected went up by 50 or more points

partyatmygaff

It's not always impossible to get a rough estimate of the points. I had some mild success last year with my spreadsheet for Medicine 2011. The mean difference between the actual points and the estimates was only +/- 2. All you really need for a reasonably accurate estimation are many participants and a decent algorithm. Hopefully i'll be running the survey again this year (With a newer and improved algorithm).


For those interested...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjdswhIupxjadGVHUHR3Tm5oRUt5SGdYZUpJX1YweGc&hl=en_US&pli=1#gid=1

Meglamonia

If I tell you the course I want checked would you do it for me?It looks a bit complicated!

partyatmygaff

Well... it is a *bit* more complicated than that alright

Unfortunately it's only useful after the LC results have been released. It's only a stopgap measure to soothe people's nerves in the 5-7 day gap between LC results and CAO offers.

Estimating the points before the LC has even been sat is impossible. Think about it. The way the CAO allocates college places is relatively straightforward.

Say for a course like Science in TCD. Say they have a quota of 400 people. The way the CAO allocates those 400 offers is...

1. They form a list of candidates who have met the matriculation requirements for the course.
2. They then take the top 400 scoring people from that list and give them offers.

Unless there's a way of predicting how well everyone will perform in the LC, there's no way of predicting CAO points.

QueenOfLeon

Meglamonia wrote: »

If I tell you the course I want checked would you do it for me?It looks a bit complicated!

The method partyatmygaff is referring to was more successful than normal because there are a lot of medicine applicants using boards who contributed. Any other course with a high number of places and applicants would be impossible to predict because you'd never be able to survey that huge amount of people.

You must put the course you want the most at the top. You have no idea of your LC results or the points you need when the CAO closes. 9 more spaces is loads for whatever back ups you want.

partyatmygaff

QueenOfLeon has it right. The method I use only works for courses with high points, low quotas and relatively high demand.

SureYWouldntYa

QueenOfLeon wrote: »

25 extra points for passing Higher Level maths, yes.

Depends really, the percentage of people doing HL in the first place is still quite small. Also, there won't be the full 25 points affecting everyone, its only if Maths will be counted as one of your top 6 for points, and even then it could only add on anything from 5-20 for some people (from what they would have got without counting maths).

Other factors are if colleges add any places to any of their courses.

Regardless, you should always fill out your CAO, not thinking of what their points will be but what your preferences of courses are

Points are only going up for courses that require higher maths eg computer science. But for other things that dont involve maths eg business the points will not go up because of the 25 extra

partyatmygaff

Not necessarily. If enough people with HL Maths apply for Business courses the points will rise accordingly.

Meglamonia

They'd want to stay away from Accounting