For so many students, so much hinges on a mix of chance and the choices of tens of thousands of their peers. This year, 51,513 students received an offer in round one but, for many, CAO points rises - particularly for science, technology, maths and engineering courses - will mean it’s not the course they had hoped for.
: these can be excellent qualifications in their own right as well as well as a gateway to higher education.The precipitous decline in interest in arts and humanities courses has been a clear trend over more than a decade, but there are signs that this may now be levelling off.
Points for most modern language courses have fallen, with UCD’s down from 464 in 2017 to 399 last year and 368 in 2019. This is despite repeated calls from employers in a range of sectors for language graduates, and may prompt policy-makers to reflect on what is going wrong. Even in business courses, students do not appear to be taking up a language option in anything close to what the economy needs.
Despite a broad fall in applications for journalism courses, points have generally risen slightly. DCU’s journalism course is up one to 401 and have stayed steady for TU Dublin’s course .One of the most significant points rises this year takes place at UCD, where its economics and finance course breaks the 600 points barrier, making it one of the most popular courses in the State at 601 points.