Trinity to welcome record number of students following CAO results

Posted on: 11 September 2020

Trinity will this month welcome a record number of students following the publication of the CAO results today, having created an extra 180 places across a range of courses to meet unprecedented demand.

Popularity in Trinity degrees continues to rise with 8,381 students opting for our university as their CAO first preference this year (up 9% on 2019). A total of 19,624 students (also up 9% on 2019), from all over Ireland applied to the university.

Points requirements for most courses (80%) have risen compared to 2019, in line with increases seen across the sector, in this unique year in which students did not sit the Leaving Cert due to COVID-19.  Vice-Provost, Professor Jürgen Barkhoff, said:

“This has been a really unusual year for everybody and especially so for students and their families, as well as for universities. In the last few days here in Trinity we have created 180 additional places across a range of high-demand courses, which is an increase of around 5% of our capacity. We’ve never had to do something like this before but it is a necessary response to an unprecedented challenge.

 “We are now in the final stages of preparation and greatly look forward to welcoming our new and existing students to Trinity within the next few weeks.”

Key Trends

The biggest points increases (compared to 2019) have been seen in Drama and Theatre Studies (564, +69); Business Studies and Polish (444, +51); Early and Modern Irish (398, +51); Intellectual Disability Nursing (396, +49); and Mental Health Nursing (408, +47).

In general, courses involving other specialisations or combinations involving business, law, nursing, geography and computer science have seen significant points increases.

Additionally, there are now four courses requiring more than 600 points (five including Medicine). These are Management Science and Information Systems Studies (613, +24 points compared to 2019); Dental Science (613, +23); Law and Business (602, +26) and Law and Political Science (602, +35). The points requirement for Medicine has risen slightly to 735 (+5).