Repeating a Leaving cert subject [or two..] in college.

RocketFalls

In a nutshell: is it possible? I failed to get into Herbal Science on account of not having two HC3s [but exceeding the points criterion by a fair bit, frustratingly enough], and I'm doing Applied Biosciences at the moment.
I really don't want to keep that course for the next four years [I'm interested in macrobiology, and this course seems to focus almost exclusively on the micro- and biochemical aspects], so I'm wondering whether I should drop out and repeat to get Herbal Science.
Repeating in college [in my own time] in order to get that HC3 would be a nice alternative, and it could work in conjunction with the credit transfer thing.
Is it possible, though?

readystudypass

Yes you can repeat 1 subject or the entire leaving cert while you are in college. You would apply to the State Examinations Commission as an external student. The application procedure will be on www.examinations.ie later in the year. Closing date is usually sometime in January.

As an external student it is simple to do subjects like English, Maths, Business etc i.e ones with no practical component. Things can get more complicated for the Sciences as you are supposed to have lab work done.

RocketFalls

readystudypass wrote: »

Yes you can repeat 1 subject or the entire leaving cert while you are in college. You would apply to the State Examinations Commission as an external student. The application procedure will be on www.examinations.ie later in the year. Closing date is usually sometime in January.

As an external student it is simple to do subjects like English, Maths, Business etc i.e ones with no practical component. Things can get more complicated for the Sciences as you are supposed to have lab work done.

And that lab work needs to be done in a secondary school? No way of doing the experiments in one of our labs? Most of them take less than half an hour anyway.
Stuff like incubation only came up in biology, as well..

readystudypass

RocketFalls wrote: »

And that lab work needs to be done in a secondary school? No way of doing the experiments in one of our labs? Most of them take less than half an hour anyway.
Stuff like incubation only came up in biology, as well..

Not necessarily. There are many secondary schools in the country that do not have the resouces or facilities to carry out the full range of mandatory experiments for the leaving cert. That's why certain colleges eg University of Limerick, NUI Maynooth and Dublin City University (they are just the ones I have heard of) allow groups of leaving cert students into their college labs around January each year to do some experiments.

So if you have access to college labs and you keep proper records of the mandatory experiments you carried out in the lab book, then you should be covered.

Or you could book yourself into one of the leaving cert lab days in the college. I know NUI Maynooth are taking bookings at the moment for their January course. Some colleges may do more experiments than others.

Epicness

Could you combine last years sitting with these new exams you did this year for total points?

readystudypass

Epicness wrote: »

Could you combine last years sitting with these new exams you did this year for total points?

You can't combine 2 leaving certs for points entry to college. You can only combine grades from different leaving certs for matriculation requirements (unless you are applying for medicine in which case matriculation requirements have to be satisfied in one sitting).