CAO predictions

Cookie201

Is there anyway to guess whether points will go up or down ? I am trying to figure out if a lot are applying for accounting this year

randylonghorn

Predicting points a very shaky science tbh (and I use the word in the same sense that alchemy is a science!).

Start with the basic premise: if the number of places available is roughly the same, the number of applicants is roughly the same, and those applying for the course score roughly the same in the LC, the points will stay (guess what! :pac:) roughly the same.

We can sometimes predict changes with *some* accuracy if there are significant changes in the first two of these factors: if the number of places available falls significantly, or the number of applicants for those places rises significantly (or indeed both), we can presume that points will go up. If place numbers rise / number of applicants fall significantly, we can presume that points will drop.

But it isn't that often that we see *significant* changes in these factors.

The usual reason for fluctuation in points is how well the applicants for a particular course score in their LC ... and this is info which we just don't have access to at any point.

A good rule of thumb though is that the smaller the number of places in a course, the more likely this factor is to have a noticeable impact year to year. If there are only 20 places available in a pretty high demand course, points can fluctuate quite wildly from year to year. If there are 1000 places available, things will tend to average out, and it will be an unusual year where there is more than a change of 5 points (assuming no major change in the number of applicants).

Cookie201

randylonghorn wrote: »

Predicting points a very shaky science tbh (and I use the word in the same sense that alchemy is a science!).

Start with the basic premise: if the number of places available is roughly the same, the number of applicants is roughly the same, and those applying for the course score roughly the same in the LC, the points will stay (guess what! :pac:) roughly the same.

We can sometimes predict changes with *some* accuracy if there are significant changes in the first two of these factors: if the number of places available falls significantly, or the number of applicants for those places rises significantly (or indeed both), we can presume that points will go up. If place numbers rise / number of applicants fall significantly, we can presume that points will drop.

But it isn't that often that we see *significant* changes in these factors.

The usual reason for fluctuation in points is how well the applicants for a particular course score in their LC ... and this is info which we just don't have access to at any point.

A good rule of thumb though is that the smaller the number of places in a course, the more likely this factor is to have a noticeable impact year to year. If there are only 20 places available in a pretty high demand course, points can fluctuate quite wildly from year to year. If there are 1000 places available, things will tend to average out, and it will be an unusual year where there is more than a change of 5 points (assuming no major change in the number of applicants).

Where can I find the number of places available

Mr Rhode Island Red

Cookie201 wrote: »

Where can I find the number of places available

It's normally given in college prospectuses and webpages for the course on college websites

hasdanta

I applied for general science courses and when I was applying I saw that the total number of applications for science was down from 2015/2016 so I could guess from the article I read that the points would go down but it's extremely hard to predict how many points exactly it'll go down (my course only went down a single point).