A fall in Leaving Certificate grades this year will not lead to a reduction in CAO points as an increased number of applicants balances out college entry requirements.
Entry points for Irish colleges are set to remain broadly the same as last year when round one CAO offers are issued at 2pm on Wednesday.
University entry requirements have become distorted in recent years following the postmarking adjustment brought in for students whose education was disrupted by Covid-19 to artificially increase results and ensure there was no cliff-edge in marks.
That grade inflation is slowly being wound down, falling from 5.8 per cent last year to 4 per cent this year. In practice, this means students who sat the Leaving Cert this year have received on average one less grade increase than last year’s class.
RM Block
This slight drop in grades could have reduced points, but counterbalancing that is an increase in overall applicants and a cohort of students from previous years with higher grades.
There are a total of 95,710 applicants to the CAO this year – an increase of 6,402 compared with last year.
Alongside this, 20,527 of this year’s CAO applicants sat their Leaving Cert in a previous year. Many of these students could have higher grades due to increased grade inflation in the years they sat their exams.
These issues have counterbalanced the drop in grades and resulted in points remaining largely the same.
While this will vary from course to course, a number of sources indicated that points for traditionally hard to access courses such as medicine and dentistry are unlikely to fall.
Data from the CAO shows a significant increase in first-preference applications for veterinary medicine (up 82 per cent), physiotherapy (up 27 per cent), and medicine (up 22 per cent).
In the fields of engineering and architecture, driven by the construction boom, application numbers are up 15 and 12 per cent respectively.
Applicants awaiting offers for these courses should not expect a decrease in CAO entry point requirements in any of the above given the high demand this year.
There is a substantial decrease in interest in information and communication technology (ICT) programmes this year, with applications down 9 per cent compared with last year. Other disciplines seeing smaller declines include agriculture and primary school teaching.
Sources indicated that CAO points requirements would fall for ICT programmes, with a smaller decrease for agriculture and primary teaching.
In an effort to meet the growing demand for spaces on medical science programmes, Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless recently allocated increased funding for hundreds of additional places in medical and paramedical programmes.
However, many universities approved for this funding are struggling to turn this funding into offers to CAO applicants due to the acute shortage of placements, which must accompany each offer.
Maynooth University, despite these challenges, has doubled the number of places in nursing and expanded places in biomedical science, psychology, sport science and nutrition.
Places in veterinary medicine are also due to increase this year by about 80, but this will be outstripped by the significant increase in first-choice applications.
Applicants can view their offers online at www.cao.ie from 2pm on Wednesday.
In advance of the results, An Garda Síochána yesterday advised students seeking third-level accommodation to watch out for scams. The force said the August to October period was the “peak season” for such scams, with “notable spikes” recorded during these months in the last two years.
The Garda said it had received 230 reports of accommodation scams, involving losses to victims of €400,000, in the first seven months of this year.
