Trinity’s groundbreaking alternative admissions feasibility study is to place more emphasis on an applicant’s relative performance in their school after University Council voted to place less weight on the personal statement aspect.
The council approved a proposal to amend the study for next year’s applicants, with the personal statement now acting only as a qualifier in the application process. Previously the personal statement written by applicants was weighted equally with an applicant’s Leaving Cert results and their relative performance ranking (RPR), which compared them to other students in their school. This will mean that personal statements will be assessed on a pass or fail basis, with only students who make it past this stage then assessed on their Leaving Cert points and RPR.
The admissions feasibility study, launched in 2014, opened 25 places in Trinity courses each year to students based on these criteria and is currently limited to three courses, with ten places available in history, ten places in law and five places in ancient and medieval history.
Speaking to The University Times by email, Patrick Geoghegan, former Senior Lecturer and project sponsor of the study, said the “most exciting thing” about the study was the ability to test different areas and change things each year.
In June, the council approved the extension of the project for a third year. The study was initially only expected to last for two years because of the large number of uncertainties behind the study, such as whether applicant’s anonymity could be successfully guaranteed.
Geoghegan said that he did not expect the change in weightings to detrimentally impact future applicants: “In the first two years we have found that the personal statement does not make too much of a difference in differentiating candidates… so it may not make a huge difference to the kinds of students who are admitted. The students who are motivated to complete the statement are the ones we want”.
The responsibility for compiling the relative performance ranking lies with the CAO, while personal statements are edited to remove all personal data and marked by two people from College departments unless there is disagreement, when it is then opened to a panel of six. According to Geoghegan, speaking to The University Times in August, not a single student challenged the score assigned to their personal statement.
While the purpose of the personal statement is to test the suitability of an applicant for their chosen course, it has been criticised for being a labour-intensive and expensive process, and one that would be unlikely to be successful if the study was expanded to include a larger number of applicants across a wider range of courses.
It is also expected that the removal of the personal statement component will end the criticism from some quarters of potential plagiarism and questionable authorship.
In 2014, the former General Manager of the CAO, John McAvoy labelled the study an “outrageous experiment” which used students as “guinea pigs”. However it was praised by the Minister for Education, Jan O’Sullivan, in an interview with The University Times in September 2014, and in subsequent editorials from The University Times.
In the memo sent to council, seen by The University Times, Geoghegan also stated that an unscored personal statement could provide a useful way to allow students to express their preferences for courses within a single course code, with subsequent filtering into separate courses of study using their points results. In this way, it is hoped that College could address external demands to reduce course codes, while maintaining specialised degrees.
Geoghegan reiterated the strength of the study, and despite not being drawn on whether it could expand in future years, said: “It is generating some excitement, not just in Trinity but across the sector. That is the really big challenge – sharing this work with other colleges and seeing if they might be interested in exploring the possibilities so we can make a meaningful change to the system for all students. That’s where Trinity wants to lead.”
