“Five Insights from CAO Offers”

While there have been concerns about grade inflation, the introduction of new tertiary degree programmes seems to be causing a decrease in CAO points in some course areas. Over 50% of candidates received their first choice in the early round of applications, while 83% were awarded one of their top three preferences. These figures are slightly lower than last year’s, but they still represent good news for the majority of students.

Perhaps extra university places are aiding this situation. Notably, newly established tertiary degree courses in 2023 that needed no CAO points have contributed 75 further placements for nursing students throughout Donegal, Sligo, and Mayo. This could be the reason for a decrease in points for the conventional Level 8 nursing degrees in Letterkenny, Castlebar, Sligo and Galway. Conversely, point requirements grew in Waterford, Cork and Dublin – regions that lack nursing tertiary degrees.

There has also been a minor dip in the points required for medicine, which may be ascribed to the increase in places for college courses. The former Minister for Higher Education, Simon Harris, introduced hundreds of new positions in medicine, nursing and other paramedical courses between 2021-2023. His successor, Patrick O’Donovan, announced extended placements in priority healthcare sectors such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy.

This expansion has begun to show noticeable effects. For instance, the addition of 120 new medical spots in the last three years has resulted in minor yet meaningful reductions in the combined Hpat and CAO point requirements for all five undergraduate medical programmes. The point prerequisites have dropped by three at Trinity, two at RCS and UCC, and one at UCD and Galway.

However, there is an element of cruel randomness in the selection process. Two course choices – Economics and Finance at UCD and Dentistry at Trinity – left some high-achieving applicants, who had attained the maximum score of 625 points, without an offer for their first preference courses.

Regrettably, several top-performing students, having achieved five H1s and one H2, who targeted courses such as Pharmacy at UCC, Actuarial and Finance at UCD, and Engineering and Management, plus Management Information Systems at Trinity, were unsuccessful in obtaining a placement in this iteration.

Over 20 different courses were impacted by the random selection process, a fact that no doubt has disheartened many. Yet, the primary majority of students remained unaffected by these circumstances.

It’s all related to the economic state, undeniably. Students’ choices in academia often mirror the perceived job prospects. For instance, we’ve witnessed a downward trend in primary education enrolment, and that might explain why the points required for CAO have drooped to 488, down 9 places at Mary Immaculate Limerick; 7 places at DCU; and 4 places at Marino. However, Maynooth seems to swim against this tide as the points there increased by nine to reach 507.

The presentation of degrees might also be a contributing factor to enrolment patterns. The largest programmes available are usually those within arts faculties, with point requirements typically in the early 300s. But following UCD’s recent revamp of its arts program into a joint honours, which combined humanities, modern languages and social sciences, the point requirements for all the four new codes have jumped substantially to range between 398 and 468.

Moving on to the issue of student accommodation. This is a significant problem for the one-third of prospective university students who are unable to commute from their parental home to university, and those who are incapable of securing or affording residence on campus. Finding accessible and cost-effective accommodation near their university is a challenge.

In the run-up to next Tuesday’s deadline of 3rd September at 3 pm for confirming places, thousands of students and their families will be on the hunt for housing options. Whilst the simple bedsit era might be a thing of the past, its loss is certainly felt by many.

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