Earlier this month on 19th June the HPAT – Ireland results were released, informing thousands of students of their results of their HPAT – Ireland exams, which they hope will assist them in getting one of the hundreds of places on an undergraduate Medicine and health professions degree programmes in the participating Irish universities. We take a look at what happens next for students who took the exam with the hope of pursuing an undergraduate degree in Medicine.
HPAT – Ireland is specifically designed to “assess logical reasoning and problem solving skills as well as non-verbal reasoning and the ability to understand the thoughts, behaviour and/or intentions of people.” The results are combined awith Leaving Certifcate scores to give a fuller assessment of a candidate’s ability to pursue medicine and health professions degree programmes in participating universities.
The participating universities that require an HPAT – Ireland score to apply for admission to any of the following courses are:
- National University of Ireland Galway – Undergraduate Medicine
- Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Undergraduate Medicine
- Trinity College Dublin – Undergraduate Medicine
- University College Cork – Undergraduate Medicine
- University College Dublin – Undergraduate Medicine
- University of Limerick – MSc Occupational Therapy (Professional Qualification) and MSc Speech and Language Therapy (Professional Qualification)
Here’s how the scores work:
Students will be notified by email when their results are available through their online account. They will receive a score for each of the three sections of the exam, Section 1, logical reasoning and problem solving, Section 2, for interpersonal understanding and for Section 3, non-verbal reasoning. These are then weighted with section 1 and 2 contributing 40pc each and Section 3 contributing 20pc.
HPAT Results
The overall HPAT – Ireland score is then calculated using the following formula: Overall Score = [(2 × Section 1 + 2 × Section 2 + 1 × Section 3) ÷ 5] × 3. The maximum score a candidate can achieve is 300.
On top of this students will be given an overall percentile rank which will give them an indication of how well they performed against other HPAT – Ireland candidates.
The allocation of places for medicine is then determined on the basis of a combination of the Leaving Certificate and HPAT – Ireland scores.
The Leaving Cert scores are moderated and adjusted and candidates are then scored out of a maximum of 865 (ie 565 as the maximum score based on the Leaving Certificate Examination (after adjustment) and 300 as the maximum score based on the HPAT-Ireland test).
Source: www2.cao.ie/
The combined score will then be used to offer a place to an applicant on a medicine degree programme. In 2020, applicants receiving an offer achieved LCE scores ranging from 543 to 625 and HPAT-Ireland scores ranging from 163 to 227. The miminium combination of scores that recieved an offer to take up an undergraduate Medicine and health professions degree programm was 731.
Demand is high and places are low which means that many of the students who took the HPAT exam back in February 2021 will have to consider other options:
Students may choose to consider pursuing Graduate Medicine on the back of 2:1 in a degree in any discipline. Students may choose to either re-sit the HPAT or the Leaving Cert of they feel they could improve their scored on either. Students could consider studying medicine in another country, such as the UK or Europe. Students may choose to take a different path altogeter and explore undergraduate courses in other subjects.
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