Your education questions answered by Brian Mooney, president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors.
I am interested in applying for a number of art and design courses through the CAO over the coming weeks. Could you give me any advice on the preparation of my portfolio? Will I be able to use the one portfolio and submit it to all my applicant colleges?
Your portfolio is central to your success in your application to any art and design course. A number of lecturers I consulted complained that students submitting portfolios to art and design colleges expect them to be Olympic weightlifters - such is the weight of portfolios submitted by some students.
A senior lecturer at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) said that too many students become too preoccupied with the packaging of their portfolio. "There is a tendency among some students to over-present their work, when what we're really looking for is signs that they are visually curious," he said.
The subject matter per se is not important, he says, what matters is how it is used by the student. He says that students whopresent work in only one area, say fine art for instance, will not usually get a place on an art and design course - versatility is needed. He says students who have researched their ideas and then developed them over several stages are the ones most likely to get places.
Regarding your second question, I can give you no assurance that you will have portfolios returned to you by various colleges. They receive so many that the implications of giving a guarantee of return would put them in a legally difficult position. For that reason, many colleges specify that portfolios will not be returned.
Given that the advice given above is to show an example of each stage of your development, I would recommend that you put together separate portfolios with individual examples of each area and stage of your work. In that way, you will be able to show each college the full range of your skills.
I have recently decided to study at third level as a mature student, but have discovered that I am two months too young for the CAO age requirement and, unfortunately, my Leaving Certificate points from 1999 will not carry me through the normal CAO application.
Are there any colleges or universities that "bend" this specific age rule or are there certain courses where no age rule applies? No doubt there are others who believed that being 23 at the beginning of the academic year in 2004 was sufficient and have waited five years to return to study only to discover they must wait another 12 months.
It is unclear from your question to what extent your 1999 Leaving Cert is deficient. If you have two grade Cs in higher papers and four passes, you can get places in numerous degree programmes. If you are working full-time, you could, for example, apply to Evening Arts in UCD, which is open to those over 20 years of age, with the basic matriculation requirement specified above.
Most institutes of technology have a range of certificate/diploma courses open to those holding five grade Ds in the Leaving Cert. If you have less than five passes in your Leaving Cert, there is no guarantee that just because you are over 23 next year, you will be offered a place you cannot access this year.
E-mail questions to bmooney@irish-times.ie
