3,300 Places Offered to Prospective Students to Study at Trinity

Posted on: 18 August 2014

Approximately 3,300 places are being offered to prospective undergraduate students to study at Trinity College Dublin this year. Points for courses at the University show strong demand in 2014, reflecting the popularity of Trinity degrees.

The overall trends show increases in Science with courses such as Nanoscience, Physics & Chemistry of Advanced Materials up 10 points to 595* (*Random Selection applies), while Theoretical Physics has risen 50 points to 550.

Management Science & Information Systems Studies (MSISS) is up 30 points to 515*.

This year has also seen an increase in Engineering which rose by 5 points to 470, Computer Science is up by 5 points to 465 and Engineering with Management rose by 5 points  to 460.

In the Health Sciences, courses such as Physiotherapy show an increase of 10 points to 545*, Radiation Therapy is up 5 points to 535* while Dental Science shows no change and remains at 585 points as does Pharmacy with 565 points.

Points in Medicine have decreased for the first time this year by 15 points to 733. This has occurred across the university sector and is largely attributed to the changes made to the HPAT-Ireland test which resulted in lower overall scores.

In Arts, Humanities and the Social Sciences, points for Law remained unchanged at 530* while Law combined with Politics saw an increase of 5 points to 575. There were no changes in other popular courses such as Business, Economic and Social Studies that remained at 495*, as did Computer Science and Business at 465*. There was also no change in Social Studies which remained at 460 and Philosophy, Political Science, Economics and Sociology at 540. Business and Language programmes showed some increases such as Business and German up 5 points to 490; and Business and Spanish was also up 15 points to 525.

This year has also seen a helpful corrective to recent increases in the points for many courses. English Studies has dropped by 10 points, and there has been no change for some other courses.  Various subjects in the Two Subject Moderatorship (TSM) courses, experienced a drop in points, in line with the decline in demand for courses in the Arts and Humanities across the sector and a shift towards STEM courses.  TSM is one of the areas Trinity is looking at as part of the sectoral reform of third level admissions.

In line with the other universities and institutes of technology, Trinity is working to reduce the pressure on school-leavers and ease the transition from second to third-level.  Some of this work will involve the reduction of course codes, and the development of more general entry points, aligning with national policy in the area, and other important work is being done to see if Leaving Certificate results can be used alongside other indicators as part of the admissions process.

Trinity has long recognised that the pressure of the points race needs to be addressed, with the Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast, noting at a major international conference on fair admissions in May 2012 that the use of points alone may be too narrow a gate through which to admit students.

This year Trinity has  trialled for the first time a new admissions model on three of its most popular courses in a feasibility study which will be shared with the entire third level sector.  The objective was to see whether it might be possible to develop a better and fairer mechanism to identify and admit applicants to college.  There were 270 applications for the 25 places in the three subjects on offer (History, 10 places), (Law, 10 places), and (Ancient and Medieval History and Culture, 5 places). For further details about the feasibility study see www.tcd.ie/undergraduate-studies.

Commending all prospective undergraduate students today on receiving a CAO offer to study in Trinity and all other third level institutions, the Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Dr Gillian Martin said:

“Congratulations to all those students who have received third-level offers today. We are looking forward to welcoming the new Junior Freshman students to Trinity. They are about to become part of a diverse and inclusive Trinity community of students, staff and alumni, who will support them as they embark on a new and exciting phase in their lives.”