If it were ever true that incoming first-year undergraduate students were nearly all school leavers who sat their Leaving Certificate a few months earlier then it is certainly no longer true.
At University College Dublin, which will offer around 4,500 places to first-year undergraduate students this year, more than 600 students received earlier offers in July and early August through the Central Applications Office (CAO) including mature applicants, Open Learning students and QQI-FET candidates who have completed courses in further education. This figure is an increase on previous years.
A further 600 offers were made in Round One on Wednesday to students through the HEAR and DARE schemes. Offers were also made to students from the United Kingdom and European Union who also apply through the CAO.
That leaves about 3,300 places to be competed for by the 10,700 applicants who had listed a UCD course this year as their first preference by school leavers under 23 years on January 1st.
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Within that 10,700 number are those presenting a Leaving Cert, of whom 72 per cent are the class of 2025 and 28 per cent from previous years, mainly under 23 years of age.
We then have school leavers from Northern Ireland, elsewhere in the UK and, in ever-increasing numbers, school leavers who live in continental EU countries who want to study in an English language setting within the bloc where they have a right to compete on an equal playing field with Republic of Ireland school leavers.
So, when students sit down in their first lecture in UCD and in every other third-level institution in a few weeks’ time, they will find themselves in a room full of people of various ages and nationalities, representing a diverse cross section of Irish, British and EU nationals plus a cohort of international applicants who seek places outside the CAO process at full international fees.
Did the decision by the Minister for Education to begin gradually to reduce the enhanced grades awarded since Covid-19 from 2025 lead to a reduction in CAO entry points requirements?
Looking at the entry points requirements across all courses published on Wednesday, it is clearly evident that, although the 51,000 CAO applicants who sat the Leaving Cert in 2025 got on average one less enhanced grade than those who sat the Leaving Cert in the previous four years, the absence of those 68,000 grades or so were far outweighed by the 19,750 applicants who carried enhanced grades from previous years and the 5,000 additional CAO applicants in 2025.
Because the reduction in the enhanced grades was most evident in the numbers of H1s awarded on August 22nd, there is evidence in Wednesday’s offers of a modest easing of pressure on the CAO points requirements at 600 and above. Below that ceiling many courses have seen an increase across a wide range of courses, with points staying at 2024 levels in many others and points dropping for some programmes.
Random selection still applies
Two programmes where students secured 625 CAO points – dentistry, and management science and information systems studies in Trinity College Dublin – resorted to random selection to determine who secured the available places. Dentistry in Cork and the new degree in RCSI went to random selection at 613. Pharmacy in Trinity and Galway did so at 601. Nineteen other degrees throughout the system applied the random selection process.
Representatives of the universities, but specifically Maynooth, have indicated that, where random occurred, in many cases additional places were created to avoid the random selection process.
If some students fail to accept a place on the course by the closing date on Tuesday, September 2nd, these additional places may fall away as colleges may not want to drop down to the next points score on the scale and end up in the random selection dilemma again.
Number of courses at level-eight where random selection occurs is at 25 this year.
Which disciplines were up or down this year?
Across the most-popular courses agricultural science is up as is commerce, engineering, journalism, law, general nursing and science.
Down are teaching, particularly at second level in the teaching subject-related degrees. Also down this year are occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, pharmacy and psychology.
If you did not get an offer?
Applicants who do not receive an offer may wish to check the CAO’s “available places” facility which opens online on Thursday at noon. These places are also available for new applicants for a €45 fee. It is free to existing applicants. There are a number of courses which have been approved by universities’ validation processes since applicants had to finalise their course choices by July 1st. An example is a new nursing degree at Maynooth University. There are a number of other such programmes waiting to receive applications in the coming days with offers next week. For more information see cao.ie.
Additional places
Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless sanctioned and approved additional funding to create several hundreds of additional places in medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, dietetics, radiography, medical science, podiatry and social work among others.
Some are new courses such as dentistry in RCSI with a new campus in Sandyford, Co Dublin. Others are an expansion of existing courses such as the 30 additional places in radiography in UCD. Obviously where additional places have been added these may ease the pressure on CAO points, but not necessarily.
In UCD, for example, DN400 medicine (undergraduate entry) is up to 738. This course’s points and allocation of places are based on a combination of the Leaving Cert examination and HPAT-Ireland score.
UCD’s undergraduate courses with the most increase in first-preference demand were DN425 sports, health and exercise science and DN410 radiography, with first-choice preferences for both increasing by more than 40 per cent. The applicant awareness of the 30 additional radiography places obviously spurred a huge increase in applications.
Offers increase to UK applicants
Trinity College has seen an increase in applicant numbers, including from Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. The more favourable treatment of A-level students, where taking only three subjects in the past excluded them from many high points courses, has resulted in up to 300 offers to UK-based applicants from Trinity. Overall applicants from Britain this year were 1,163.
Even though some Trinity programmes saw a reduction in points, overall the average points requirement for Trinity courses has increased on 2024 by 10 points or one CAO grade or 2.5 per cent.
Increased number of EU applicants
Because of the negative effect of Brexit on the cost to continental EU applicants to study in Britain or Northern Ireland, their numbers seeking places have grown exponentially in the past three to four years from under 2,000 to 6,693 in 2025.
Many of those EU applicants offered places on Wednesday will have accepted places weeks ago in other EU universities given the relatively late offer date in Ireland. Even if they were favourably inclined to accept an offer of a place, our accommodation costs compared to European norms are prohibitive.
