Trinity College Dublin Named Sunday Times University of the Year 2014

Trinity College Dublin has been named University of the Year in The Sunday Times University Guide 2014. The guide contains Ireland’s only league table that measures the performance of third-level institutions.

 

The 2014 guide ranks Trinity as the best university in Ireland for the 12th year running, measured against six key indicators, including the average Leaving Certificate points needed for entry, course completion rates, top degrees awarded, graduate job prospects, the income generated from research and staffing levels. 

 

Trinity  won this year’s award not only for leading the league table, but also for its research capabilities and wider contribution to third-level education in Ireland. Looking at how the admissions system to third-level can be reformed, Trinity plans to admit 25 students in 2014 to three popular programmes, history, law, and ancient and medieval history through a new pilot admissions scheme that places greater emphasis on personal statements and looking at how a student’s academic performance ranks within the school they attend. 

Among Trinity’s recent scientific advances has been the discovery that Vitamin A has a protective role to play in combating inflammatory bowel disease and the development of a new method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, which will have significant impact in the worldwide race to cheaply and efficiently produce hydrogen gas, hailed as the clean energy source of the future.

 

Trinity’s other achievements over the past year include joining forces with Google in a ground-breaking project to provide 1000 secondary teachers with computer science skills, Trinity sports scholarships students, Natalya Coyle and Mark Kenneally competing in the London Olympics, bringing the Science Gallery’s ‘Future of Play’s’ exhibit to Moscow’s Polytechnical Museum, a new fossil genus being named after Geology Professor, Patrick Wyse Jackson and the opening of a state-of-the-art €7 million Clinical Research Facility (CRF) in partnership with St James’s Hospital.