• Question: how many points do you need in your leaving cert to become ac robotic engineer?

    Asked by noddythepony123 to Graham, Dino, Cara, Aisling on 6 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Aisling Lee

      Aisling Lee answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      Good question. As im sure youre aware our points system has changed and also so too has the demand for different courses.
      The points for a course are set based on the demand for places eg a course with 10 places and only 6 people apply would have a requirment of 0 points. Versus say the following year where 30 people applied and then the places go to the top 10 scoring students.
      As a result as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths) courses get more popular the points will go up.

      In short theres no fixed answer like “get 400 points or higher if you want to study engineering”. Just remeber theres always a way to study what you want to do and sometimes the longer route is the best.

      Check out the CAO website for the most recent point requirments for courses. And check out DIT courses DT066 and DT097 for general entry into engineering

    • Photo: Graham Cullen

      Graham Cullen answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      The main college courses for having a career in robotics would be Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Software Engineering. All these different disciplines are used in the creation of a robot. A degree in Engineering is a ‘level 8’ course, I started in college on a 2 year ‘level 6’ course in Mechanical Engineering in DIT. I then did a 1 year extension to achieve a ‘level 7’ ordinary degree.My results at level 7 were not great, so I did a bridging course of 3 nights per week in basic subjects (Maths and Thermodynamics) and then I spent another 2 years to get my ‘level 8’ degree in Mechanical Engineering. The points required to get on the ‘level 6’ course were reasonable – I got mostly Cs and Ds in Higher level subjects in the Leaving Certificate back in 2002. One of the main things I learned in college is that if I invested a small amount of time into a topic (even a boring a differentiation from first principles) then I became more interested in it and wanted to learn the topic. If I could go back in time I would put more effort into studying for the Leaving Certificate as it would have progressed my career and my life faster, but I did enjoy all they time spent in college and I think I am better for it now!

      So in all don’t worry too much about points because there are many different paths to get where you want to go, but if you want to get there faster put the effort in now and it will benefit you later.

    • Photo: Cara O'Brien

      Cara O'Brien answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      The leaving cert is changing so much and the points change every year so I don’t know what you need now to do engineering.

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