2% Increase in CAO First Preference Applications to Trinity College Dublin

Posted on: 09 March 2011

Trinity College Dublin has received the highest number of first preference applications in the CAO system for 2011.  The CAO figures for 2011 show an increase of 2% in first preference applications to Trinity College Dublin by prospective undergraduate students.  This increase comes in a year in which overall CAO applications to third level institutions have decreased.

The increase in applications was spread across each of the University’s faculties.  The degree of choice offered by Trinity’s Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences  continue to be popular with applicants as demonstrated by the  increases in first preference applications to European languages such as German (+24%), Italian (+18%)  as well as  multi-disciplinary language courses such as Business studies and French (+30%), Business Studies and Russian (+42%) and Law and German (+4%).   Other courses in this area which witnessed strong increases include History (+33%), Sociology and Social Policy (+50%), Deaf studies (+63%) and Music education (+28%).

The high level of demand for Trinity’s general entry Science course continued in 2011, with an increase in first preference applications of 16%.  Other science courses which attracted substantial increases in first preference applications include Nanoscience, physics and chemistry of advanced materials (+100%), Mathematics (+56%), Earth sciences (+38%), and Medicinal chemistry (+29%).  First preference applications to Computer science increased by 20%, Management Science and Information Systems (MSISS) by 30%, while Computer science, linguistics and French achieved an increase of 63%.  Total applications to the Engineering, and Engineering with management courses (which now offer an optional 5th year for students who wish to graduate with a Masters level degree) increased by 1% and 3% respectively.

There continues to be strong demand in Health Sciences courses at Trinity where there was an increase in first preference applications in courses such as Pharmacy (+34%), Human health and disease (+31%), the two General nursing courses (+23% and +67%), Radiation therapy (+22%), Physiotherapy (+10%) and Medicine (+2%): despite an overall decrease in CAO applications to the Human medicine sector of 4%.

Successful applicants will be among the first to avail of the new Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute. This new facility will house all preclinical medical training and researchers from the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science, Biochemistry and Immunology, Chemistry and Engineering.