How to get six hundred points in the Leaving Cert

RORY CREAN

Managing your time properly and drawing up a realistic timetable are key to making it through the year

I AM A FIRST-YEAR medical student in UCD and I got straight As in my Leaving Cert this year. I went to Blackrock College for most of my secondary schooling but moved to the Institute of Education for the exam year.

Unusually, I suppose, I remember the Leaving Cert year with fondness. Genuinely, very little was unenjoyable. I enjoyed the camaraderie of being in the same boat with all the other Institute students and my only gripe was with the HPAT, the entrance exam for medicine.

I suppose the HPAT, or rather the effects the HPAT had on the students, was the least enjoyable element.

Because the grading system is based purely on the performance of your peers, there was a sense of competition that only added unnecessary stress and complications to the school day.

I love “dad music” and drama. I sings in choirs and have performed solo in the NCH and played the lead in school productions.

I have a unique approach to study. I write short, personal descriptions of everything I learn, making small dramas and mini-epics out of everything from ionic bonding to French verbs.

It works me because you can only put something in your own words if you understand it first.

GOING UP

(to 600 points)

KEEPING YOUR SOCIAL LIFE

You stand absolutely nothing to gain by shutting yourself in a dark room with only a candle and a textbook for company.

You need to stay involved with your friends and your hobbies, it’s what weekends were made for!

STAYING ORGANISED

We’re nearly two months into school year, so most of you will have worked out a “system”. By this I mean a way of taking, making and filing notes. If you haven’t, it’s time you did.

MANAGING TIME

Sit down and devise a study timetable. The important thing is to be realistic. No one can go to school from 9am-4pm, and then study from 4pm till midnight. On the other hand, if you stick to the bare minimum, you’ll pay for it in the long run. How long you spend on each subject is up to you, but I would say that the earlier you start the better. The earlier you start, the sooner your day clears up for whatever else is going on.

STAYING ACTIVE

I’m not talking about four hours on the treadmill and raw egg shakes, but some kind of exercise (preferably in the fresh air) will help you a lot. I liked to cycle and play golf.

TESTING YOURSELF

Your teachers may not set you weekly, fortnightly or monthly tests, but that’s not to say you can’t set them for yourself. Constantly checking how you’re faring on a topic and knowing what areas need attention is one of the best tools at your disposal.

EATING WELL

A Dairy Milk and Coke isn’t going to last you, instead you’re going to have a massive sugar crash and the rest of the school day is a write-off. Try and keep a well-balanced diet with plenty of fresh fruit and lots of water.

ME-TIME

This is probably my favourite on the Going Up list because lots of people just ignore it completely. I would not, under any circumstances, work after 10pm. Never.

SLEEPING

Eight hours minimum each night.

TALKING CONSTRUCTIVELY ABOUT THE LEAVING CERT

My friends and I tried to ban the subject and failed. So we changed the tone of conversation. For example, we talked about interesting history topics or what we were including in our geography fieldwork. We avoided panicky clichés like “I really should be studying right now” or “only three weeks left”!

GOING DOWN

(to points meltdown)

PARTYING ALL NIGHT

Most of you are approaching, if you haven’t already crossed, the 18-year mark. This means nights out are going to be more frequent; 18ths, 19ths, pre-debs and many, many more parties dotting your social calendar. The key is to take everything in moderation. Going out two nights of the weekend is going to make the mornings a write-off.

FORGETTING ABOUT THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE

If you’re having a crummy day, doing badly in a subject, or just cranky from too little sleep, don’t take it out on the people around you because – believe it or not – they might have had a rough day too. Treat them nice because you’ll need them in May.

SCRAPING BY

The best work I did was in the first three months. Once I settled in, I started to ease off on the study, which was a huge mistake. Thankfully, the consistent work I had put in early on paid off in the end. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of things from the get-go.

PULLING ALL-NIGHTERS

If you push yourself too hard, drink too many cans of Red Bull, or try to cram in 200 pages of biology in an hour, you are going to fry your brain.

PROCRASTINATING

Facebook. If you study with your laptop like I did, you’ll often find that with just three mouse-clicks, you can get to that blue-bannered time sink. You don’t have to get rid of your Facebook account, but keep it for your hour or two off, not when you’re in the middle of a concept that hasn’t clicked yet.

LOSING FOCUS

Some of us know exactly where we’ll be in 10 years, some don’t know about the next five minutes. Set yourself a target like attaining X hundred points, getting into course Y or just going to college Z next year.

TOUCHY SUBJECTS

Did I choose wisely?

For the last year, I chose the risky tactic of doing eight subjects, only six of which were at higher level. Those eight were the mandatory trinity (English, Irish and maths), physics, chemistry, French, geography and music.

Of those, I took Irish and maths at ordinary level, both of which I took at higher level during 5th year. The reason I decided to drop was for the functional reason that the work required to bring my grades in both Irish and Maths up to the standard of the other six was too much.

When you break it down, you will have spent hundreds of hours on each subject by the time you get to exam day. Having pass Irish and maths freed up a lot of time, particularly on my weekends, to focus on my core subjects. This meant that every hour I would have spent on maths or Irish to bump up from, say, a B3 to a B1, I could instead focus on a subject where I could move from an A2 to an A1.

For most of 6th year, I had a few niggling doubts about my subject choice. Should I have done history? Could I have handled higher maths? However, at the end of the exams I could look back and say I made the right choice. If you haven’t already finalised your subjects, you will soon. Try and make that decision final and focus on your choices, rather than worrying about things that won’t affect you in the exams.

MY SECRET TO STUDY SUCCESS . . .


Putting difficult concepts into my own words. This way I had to understand them, and I was better able to remember them. When I was writing out topics in class, I would write in shorthand, or in ambiguous terms because the topic was so fresh in my mind. But as soon as one week later, I could have completely forgotten the intricacies of the topic and my notes might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics.

In sixth year, I changed my approach. I imagined I was explaining a topic to someone who had no grasp of it.

Here’s an example: Ionic bonding is defined as the electrical attraction between the oppositely charged ions which are produced when electrons are transferred from one atom to another. This occurs when there is an electronegativity difference between the two elements involved in the bond that is greater than 1.7. One atom is literally so strong that it takes the electron completely from another atom to form the aforementioned ionic bond.

Consider a bully and a nerd in a playground. The bully is chlorine, who has a very high value for electronegativity and lots of electrons. His value for electronegativity is his strength, and his electrons are the money he has.

The nerd, comparatively, has a very low electronegativity (strength) ie he is weak and he has only a few electrons (change in his pockets). The bully (chlorine) doesn’t care though, and because he is so much stronger (electronegativity difference greater than 1.7), he takes the nerd’s money (electrons).