During his Leaving Cert, Konstantin Punic from Baldoyle in north Co Dublin gave up his football and boxing training with just one aim in mind: to get into his chosen college course.
Last week, it looked like it had all paid off: his family celebrated after he achieved a maximum of 625 points based on 7H1s and one H2.
“I worked hard, with a lot of early mornings, but I still couldn’t believe it,” says Punic, who attended St Fintan’s High School. “I had to log in and out twice, just to double check the results were right.”
On Wednesday last, when college offers were issued, he was in disbelief again: he missed out on his first-choice college course of economics and finance at UCD after applicants were chosen by lottery.
“I thought I had done enough – I couldn’t actually do any more,” he says. “I just feel hard done by. It’s very disheartening and deflating.
“You’re told that if you get the results, you’ll get the course. Now, I feel like I’m in no man’s land. The system doesn’t feel fair. Leaving a course down to random chance isn’t fair.”
Economics and finance is one of more than 20 CAO (Central Applications Office) courses where universities were forced to use random selection, or a lottery, to select successful applicants this year.
Colleges have blamed inflated Leaving Cert grades for making it difficult to differentiate between candidates on top grades for high-demand courses.
Another student who missed out on the UCD economics and finance course due to random selection, after securing 625 points, was Sarah Kenny (19) from Co Wexford whose father said students were being unfairly treated after working as hard as they could.
The UCD course, says Punic, jumped out at him because of his twin passions of maths and economics. While he has an offer for his second choice course of human health and disease at Trinity College Dublin, his heart is set on the UCD course.
“It’s the course I really want to do,” he says.
Punic, who was born in Ireland, says his family is proud of his achievements: his father is a physical therapist, originally from Serbia, while his mother, a carer, is from Bosnia.
He needs to make a decision by 3pm on Tuesday, when the deadline for acceptance of round one offers expires: take his second choice, or reapply next year in the hope he gets the UCD course a second time.
He hasn’t given up hope of a solution in the meantime.
“Maybe UCD might expand their intake. It’s not like it’s a science or medicine course, where there’s only so many laboratories or hospital placements,” he says. “I would have thought UCD would want to hold on to students who’ve got top grades.”
UCD has not commented to date, while Minister for Higher Education Patrick O’Donovan’s office said in a statement that “random selection provides an unbiased method to distinguish between applicants who are otherwise equally qualified for a place in a course.”
“The use of this system is a matter determined by the CAO and the higher education institutions,” a spokesman for Mr O’Donovan’s department added.
Punic, however, feels the process is deeply unfair. He hopes the Minister will put pressure on UCD to expand its intake.
“It’s worse than the Leaving Cert – at least that is in your control. I thought there would be some way of making it based on merit. It feels like merit is being thrown out the window.”
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