ATC Student Programme 2013 *Warning post 195*

Best of luck to all who have applied

I threw my hat in. Would love to do it but i dont think there is much chance of affording it, usless banks want to give me a massive unsecured loan. But anyway I want to see if I get offered a place and then deal with the impossible task of doing the programme.

At least if I fail to get offered a place I wont ever wonder.

I'm told only a few hundred applied for obvious reasons.

I applied a good while back and got called back alright. Got the email today to go for the test at 09:00 on the 14th in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin.

But looking through the thread, my heart is breaking slightly. I live in North Wicklow at the moment and I'm happy where I am. Obviously, there's no way I can commute every day. So it would necessitate moving down to Shannon/Limerick to be able to do the training.

I was well prepared to uproot and move down, providing there was some kind of subsidy or if there was a "campus"-style training college where you had a room and there was a canteen or something.

I do have a good bit of money saved up, but not near enough to support myself for 2 years where I cannot work part-time or where there is no subsidy. I would have to rent a room/apartment/bedsit or something. I can't imagine that will be all that cheap to do. There's also the small issue of the basic necessities of food. Then the other "necessities" (phone credit, diesel/petrol, laundry detergent, soap, etc.)

I'd even be prepared to quit smoking (I don't drink or do drugs at all). But even that won't be enough.

This is incredibly upsetting and is just driving it into the arms of the wealthy and/or people from near the area. Anyone from the Greater Dublin Area, Wicklow, Meath, Louth, Kildare and even Northern counties is totally precluded from this unless they're super-wealthy and have the guts of €25,000 lying around to fund themselves.

I don't fancy the idea of giving up my life here, living in enforced poverty for 2 years, not being guaranteed a job (maybe) and being totally unfunded.

I wouldn't have minded doing everything possible, but nobody in my family could/would sponsor me at all and I simply don't have enough money for it myself. So I'm screwed.

I'm still going to go up to the test in Dublin, but I'll be asking a lot of questions and trying to get a definitive answer.

I'm really gutted having just read through this thread and other sources on the subject. This is a job I would have loved to have had a crack at getting, but the way things are looking, it will be just impossible and unworkable. Unless I can get a big, unsecured bank loan. Though I do have a car and some other stuff to put as collateral, though I don't know if I want to risk everything and possibly give up 2 years of my life and not have anything to show for it at the end.

Gutted...