Leaving Cert DCG predictions 2024 (Higher Level)
Introduction
Another thing before we start, I want to clarify, that although DCG questions can seem a bit sporadic, it is not an entirely unpredictable exam. Questions from previous years might not follow a particular trend, but generally questions that have come up 2 or 3 times in a row are less likely to come up and vice versa. Also, most topics are quite quick to revise, so if you feel you’d be safer doing an extra topic, definitely do it, as it probably won’t take up too much of your time.
Optional topics in Section C
I will talk about the most important and common topics within the DCG curriculum. Before I start listing my predictions however, I’m going to cover the 2 optional topics you are required to have covered. In my case, this was geological geometry and surface geometry.
These questions appear in Section C of the exam, and tend to provide minimal surprises. The first 70-80% of the question should be mostly, if not immediately recognisable, although the final part may challenge you.
80-90% of the marks go for your core understanding of the topic whilst the last 10% tends to test your deeper understanding (This stays true for most of the questions on the exam paper). It’s important not to get too scared by this as the last parts of the question could amount to as little as 2 or 3 marks meaning as little as 3-4% of the questions marks (Again, this stays true for questions in Section B).
Disclaimer: I may say some topics are “guaranteed” to come up in the DCG exam for 2024, but I do this with 99% confidence. The State Examinations Commission has the right to include or leave out any topic (apart from those in Section C) from the exam as they please. I’d advise any student to at least have a solid grounding of each and every topic, so they are not left stuck in the DCG exam.
General patterns of the Leaving Cert DCG exam
Be it a long or a short question, the Dihedral angle of two planes seems to be an almost guaranteed question in any year. There is a very clear and concise step by step process to how the question is answered. Now, I say almost guaranteed for a good reason, because they have asked a long question on the dihedral angle between two planes for the past two years now, so I’d be more confident that it shows up as a short question as opposed to a long question.
Skew lines is also an useful topic to revise, but again there isn’t any guarantee of it making an appearance this year.
Perspective did not come up in any shape or form in last year’s exam (2023). In my opinion, this is a guaranteed long/short question, if not both (yes, they have asked for perspective in both a long and a short question before). Perspective is a great topic when you know the key steps and can roughly visualise what the object will look like in perspective, so its a great topic to easily obtain 70-80% of the marks without trouble. On top of that, if you understand how to project true heights and use auxillary vanishing points, you could be looking at 90% and upwards in this question.
The exam could also entail a Conics long question (like in 2017 B-1), likely dealing with either ellipses or parabolas or even both. It’s good news for everyone doing structural forms, as I see conics play a big role in that topic also. Exams also tend to have a conics short question, but I see there being no guarantee of that this year. Then again, it would be a unwise to leave out this topic altogether.
An Axonometric projection long question came up in the 2023 exam, which was in my experience, easy, but quite long due to the amount of hidden detail. There is no ruling out a dimetric or trimetric projection from next year’s exam, as in years previous, this topic has come up twice in a row (e.g. 2014 and 2015), and also coincidentally, it has been left out as a long question three times in a row (2016, 2017 and 2018).
It serves as a reminder that just because a topic doesn’t show up the previous year, doesn’t mean it’ll show up the next year, or even the year after that. Perspective coming up on next years exam is quite likely, but by no means 100% certain.
DCG predictions for Leaving Cert 2024
On the whole I don’t think there should be many topics you should decide to leave out completely. Personally, the only core topic I left out last year was perspective, and I was very thankful when I opened the exam paper to find it missing entirely, and even then, that was still taking a risk.
The classic planes and geometry question (Q B-3 2019 for reference) has come up the past 2 years, so I’m predicting it could show up as a short question, not a long question.
A classic Skew lines question will likely make an appearance.
I’d expect Perspective to be on the exam, as a long or a short question, possibly both.
An Axonometric projection type question should make an appearance, at least as a short question. I’d expect it to take the form of either a dimetric or a trimetric projection.
A Conics (with Orthographic) long question, in my eyes, is my guarantee* this year.
Intersection of solids may make another appearance, but as a short question instead.
To make this clearer, here is my one of my predictions of the paper:
| Section A | Section B |
| Axonometric | Perspective |
| Intersecting solids | Trimetric |
| Perspective | Conics |
| Dihedral angle |
Make sure to use this as only a guide, there is a large likelihood that the exam will appear as a variation of this (e.g. one or two topics are switched). DCG is a subject where it is quite easy to revise topics in a short period of time, so my advice is to encourage yourself to do an extra topic to be safe, especially if it doesn’t take up much more of your time.
You might have noticed that most of my predictions have referred to long questions, and this is because generally the scope for the short questions is smaller, meaning they can’t ask as many awkward or difficult parts.
Surprises on Leaving Cert DCG exams
Any exam you are going to get is going to be different in some respect to previous years. You might even be asked a question that has not come up in the last 10+ years, or part of a question you may have covered, but has never come up in previous years.
In my year’s (2023) exam, we were asked a long question on intersecting solids (Section B, Q B-1). The same sort of long question had not appeared in the last 10 years. Although this might seem pretty frightening, from looking at the question now, I realise that had I revised the question, it would have been remarkably easy. The point is, if a question on a topic that hasn’t come up in previous years, it’s probably going to be quite easy compared to the questions from back then, hence it might be worth looking over.
