Trinity College Dublin is considering expanding a pilot college entry scheme whereby a small proportion of students are admitted from outside the standard Central Applications Office process.

Last August, 25 students were admitted to three courses – history, law, and ancient and medieval history – under a pilot phase of the scheme.

TCD’s governing council has approved its continuation for a second year, and a progress report has recommended it be extended to other programmes.

Under the scheme, three measures are used to evaluate applicants: Leaving Cert results; an anonymous personal statement of interest; and the relative performance rank (RPR) of the applicant – a measure of their results against other students in their school.

Half the students admitted last year under the scheme said neither parent had been to university, indicating success in broadening the entry cohort.

While there was some evidence of plagiarism in personal statements, this was easily detected through computer software, the report said. It suggested statements in future might be submitted at school or administered under State examinations to confirm “authorship”.

The report also proposed giving RPR a higher value than the personal statement in future.

A downside with the project was cost. Readers were paid €9 per application to read and score. There was also a cost of €20,000 for the CAO to develop the system.

“If the new admissions route was used for every course, and each application was read twice, then it would cost [about] €360,000 . . . though it would be considerably less if the job was performed by salaried readers,” the progress report said.