Advice and info wanted for leaving cert at 24 years old

gstack166

Hi, Im looking for a small bit of advice and info on taking the leaving cert for adults.Im 24 with just my junior cert behind me, i now realise the mistake i made by leaving school early, first of all i just want to know am i too late to enlist this year? would i have to wait until sept 11? i want to take it to go to college and get myself the qualifications of a decent proper job,im looking for advice on anyone that has taken this at my age etc. im just back from 2 years travelling as i got a good redundancy from my job when the factory closed down 2 years ago so im ready to start asap, any info or advice how to do it and ideas would be greatly appreciated also i live in limerick so if anyone knows where i can do this in the city i'd greatly appreciate this. Thanks

Irishchick

Being 24 you are classed as a mature student so you dont need a leaving cert.

Mature candidates are given an interview where youll talk about the course and your relevant experiences in that area.

You can go back and do the leaving ( Too late to do it this year though) but its not essential to get to college.

Larianne

I'm not sure if it's too late or not. You'll have to get contacting places pretty quickly!

You can only do the leaving cert from scratch in a school/PLC facility taking 2 years. If you want to do it in one year you have to do it all by yourself. Nowhere will take you for just one year if you have never sat the LC before. (My friend is in this predicament.) Just so you know if you were expecting to do it in one year.

I would suggest looking at either a PLC course or an access course attached to a university.

Do you know what you would like to study??

While, no you don't need your LC to gain a place in university, the institutions like you to have had some type of academic study behind you. A PLC would suffice in a lot of cases.

KeithTS

You are eligible for a lot of courses as a mature student so look into that and ask around the colleges to see if you could get onto a course that you would like.
I know first hand that a lot of courses require a minimum grade in certain subjects in the LC and it's tricky to get around this if you don't have it.

The route I took being in a similar siuation to yourself this time last year was to apply both to colleges for undergrad courses and Access courses, I aslo looked into Lc too.
That way if I didn't get the course I wanted I had the Access to fall back on and if I didn't get that I had the info I needed to pursue the the LC.

Although you should definitely not rely on getting a course as a mature student as it's quite competetive, (you will need a very strong application and be able to show the college that you have an interest in the area of choice as well as an ability and willingness to succeed in the course) I would urge you to look into it as it worked out great for me.

The most important thing is to get as much information as possible so you can make informed decisions and to keep your options open so as not to close any doors behind you.

Best of luck with it!!!

dr gonzo

Im no expert on the subject but i would imagine youre a bit late to start now but what you could do is an access course to get you in in sept 11 which i think would suit you all round, especially if you havent done academic work since school and maybe feel like you could do with a bit of preparation first.

laurashambles

If it's just that you want to go to uni, get yourself enrolled in a PLC course pronto, most of them only start up in mid September, you might get lucky.
If you've been receiving state benefits for more than six months you qualify for the VTOS scheme in which you can do the LC. Not sure whether it generally takes one or two years but the only person I know who did it took a year. Could definitely be worth a look. I think you can start it at any point during the year as well, but don't quote me on that. (I did a fair bit of research on it a few years back but was too young to qualify for it. )

http://www.vtos.ie/