Higher Level Irish or Maths for leaving cert.

tomo1994

So it's the start of 6th year and the decisions and the pressure has already began....

Right now I'm trying to figure out (and failing!) if I should do either Higher level maths or Irish. In the JC I got an A in Maths and a B in Irish,I put a good amount of work into both. Irish was always my weaker subject and I still struggle with it but I'm improving...slowly. Maths on the other hand, I'm struggling greatly with and don't seem to be getting anywhere with it or improving. At Christmas and Summer i got a B in Irish (which included an oral at summer) and got C's in maths (both pretty low c's).

I don't think I can continue with both subjects as there both time consuming and require A LOT of work, plus there's all the other subjects to study too(including one extra subject).

The bonus points for maths is a massive incentive but I'm not sure if I'll get a grade good enough to count it as one of my six best subjects, even with grinds and focusing on it.

Should I focus on Irish and try to get a high B? Or should I just aim for the bonus points? Or keep going with both?

I know it's impossible to decide for someone else but I can't decide!!

Any help?? Any advice appricated

Sunny!!

A c3 in honours maths is 85(60+25)which is a high B in irish. I would advise sticking with honours maths. But i dont know your aptitude. Pick the subject you prefer.

KellyBel38

My advise would be to do honours maths. Yes it is more work but the extra points are an absolute godsend. Everyone who did honours maths in my school this year said if they hadn't done it, their points would have been way down and they wouldn't have gotten their course and I can say the same for me. Also remember 98% of people passed honours maths this year and if you just pass honours maths you get higher than an A1 in pass maths.

I got C's in the majority of my tests at the end of 5th year and 6th year, and I even got some D's. I think I only got around 2 B's all year and still somehow got an A2 in the leaving cert!

While maths just involves doing lots and lots of practice, irish involved lots of learning off which I hated, so it really depends on the person. But for a lot of my friends in pass irish they seemed to be putting in almost as much work for pass irish as I was for honours (I'm not sure if they just had a really ambitious teacher)

But my final word of advise now is honours maths was hard work but 100% worth it in the end!

Bambii_

Sunny!! wrote: »

A c3 in honours maths is 85(60+25)which is a high B in irish. I would advise sticking with honours maths. But i dont know your aptitude. Pick the subject you prefer.

I agree here. Maths looks more impressive as well It will be more useful to you than Irish in life.

I had to make this decision too, but it was easy for me. I was failing both (exact same result on summer tests, 30%) and decided to drop down in one. On my JC I got a B in HL Maths and a D in HL Irish, so I decided to go with maths. I enjoy Maths more than Irish and find it easier.

Irish is a waste of a subject, IMO anyway. Never had any intention of doing HL for the LC, just thought I'd try it and see how it went. Not well.

Good luck in you decision

Owen_S

Higher level Irish really isn't much work at all. Off the top of my head, oral and aural exams now comprise 50% of your overall grade, and both require relatively little work along with the comprehensions which also have a lot of marks going for them. The rest of the course is very simple.

Maths on the other hand requires a lot of work compared to Irish, but the bonus points should make up for that. It's also worth taking into account that your maths grade might determine entry to certain courses(Engineering generally requires a C3 in HL for example).
You should do Higher Level maths, but the Irish course is so easy right now that you should look to do both subjects at higher level for the sake of points.

ray2012

well, if you're looking for a lot of points (like over 500 points) i'd recommend keeping up higher level maths, as the 25 extra points would be handy if you managed to achieve them. But if you're just going for up to 450 points, for example, there's no need for honours maths really as you'd probably get enough points for the course you want without the extra 25 points anyways.

tomo1994

Thanks for the advice! Being honest I have no interest in doing any subject which has HL maths as a requirement but the bonus points are a great incentive.
I'm not sure though if I'll be able to get Maths as one of my six best subjects. I have five good subjects which I'm hoping I can get b1's in, so to count maths I'd have to aim for a b which I'm not sure id get especially with phrase 2. I'm aiming pretty high in around the 500's but I'm not sure what i want to do yet

stall_the_ball

I'm going to disagree with the other posters. I think if you have no interest and your course doesn't require Higher Level it would be a waste of time. I just did my leaving cert, having done honours maths for fifth year and dropped down at the start of sixth year. I knew it wouldn't be one of my six best and I can honestly say dropping down was the best decision I made. The difference between the 2 levels is incredible and if the ordinary course is based on Junior Cert higher level maths. This is just based on my experience, I didn't need to spend extra hours on maths that I could have used on other subjects and bear in mind that grinds are both expensive and time consuming. BTW I got a good bit above 500 points and an A in OL maths

Without a doubt do HL Irish, this year the oral has really brought people's marks up and is easy in terms of workload in comparison to English as 40% is already done and as Owen_S said, the oral and aural equate to 50%, that's massive!

Canard

tomo1994 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice! Being honest I have no interest in doing any subject which has HL maths as a requirement but the bonus points are a great incentive.
I'm not sure though if I'll be able to get Maths as one of my six best subjects. I have five good subjects which I'm hoping I can get b1's in, so to count maths I'd have to aim for a b which I'm not sure id get especially with phrase 2. I'm aiming pretty high in around the 500's but I'm not sure what i want to do yet

I agree with the above poster - I was in the same boat as you but I did both at HL. If you have any aptitude at all for languages it's much, much easier than maths. I ended up with a C3 after working my ass off (almost a C2 though :P) and I only got 10 points altogether for it...I think if I'd done OL I might have been able to focus more on my other subjects and gain a few extra points anyway. Overall it was very stressful and, on the whole, probably not worth it. Before I realized I didn't need to pass it, I was constantly stressed and struggling to understand any of it. It does take away from other subjects, but it's nice to be able to say you did HL.
So overall my advice is Irish. It's useless, really, but not much more useless than doing HL maths and not doing a maths course imo. HL Maths is fun (using that word loosely haha) in that it gets your brain working and it's refreshing to not be rote-learning all the time, but it's difficult.

Slow Show

tomo1994 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice! Being honest I have no interest in doing any subject which has HL maths as a requirement but the bonus points are a great incentive.
I'm not sure though if I'll be able to get Maths as one of my six best subjects. I have five good subjects which I'm hoping I can get b1's in, so to count maths I'd have to aim for a b which I'm not sure id get especially with phrase 2. I'm aiming pretty high in around the 500's but I'm not sure what i want to do yet

You do know that Maths doesn't have to be in your top six pre-bonus points to count it, right? So let's say you're aiming for B1's in those five, that's 85 points, a C3 in Maths is now worth 85 points, so if you got a C2 you'd have 90.

For the record, I'd stick with Maths. I just find that, even if HL Irish isn't exactly difficult per se, there is so so much to learn, it's the biggest eater into my time at the moment anyway. I'm sure Maths will pass it out at some stage though but even so, for the sake of the bonus points, I think Maths is well worth it.