Archive for CAO offers

A Day of Offerings

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , , on August 27, 2025 by telescoper

Today (27th August) is the day that students across Ireland receive offers of places at Third-Level Institutions to start next month. The offers for all courses and all institutions are available on the official CAO website here; they are also widely available elsewhere, including this searchable list.

The official numbers for Maynooth are here. Minimum points required for Maynooth’s – and indeed Ireland’s – most important course, MH206 Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are 520 this year, up a little from 513 last year. MH204 Physics with Astrophysics is 385, up two points on last year’s 383. MH201 General Science (of which Physics is a part) is on 352 points, up two from 350 last year. Just for comparison, the points for these courses from 10 years ago were: MH206 550; MH204 480; and MH201 435, all significantly higher than this year.

Maynooth’s biggest course (by student numbers) – and indeed the biggest course in Ireland reckoned that way – is the Omnibus Arts programme MH101 which has an entry level this year of just 300 CAO points. Ten years ago it was 390.

It seems the first-round entry points for most courses at Maynooth have not changed dramatically despite the reduction in Leaving Certificate grades this year after several years of artificial inflation over the Covid-19 years. Leaving Certificate results are just one factor in determining the CAO points for a particular course at a particular Institution. Overall the picture is rather complex. Across Ireland, points are up for about 50% of courses and down for about 42%. The CAO points needed for a course is largely a matter of demand versus capacity rather than academic performance. For the last few years Maynooth University has been recruiting more and more students, putting pressure on accommodation, teaching loads and campus space. This strategy will prevent any significant rise in CAO points for the foreseeable future. This is probably happening to some extent across the sector, though Maynooth has a more urgent need for more students: to pay for the legions of new managers it has appointed. Two new €100K managerial jobs have been advertised so far this week…

All this just concerns the first round of offers so things may change significantly over the next week or two. Students now have to decide whether to accept their first-round offer or try to change course. They have until next week to do this. Departments won’t know how many new students they have for a while yet.

Update: Thursday 28th August. Here is the traditional  Irish Times First Round Offers supplement.

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A Time to Offer

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , , on August 28, 2024 by telescoper

Today is the day that students across Ireland receive offers of places at Third-Level Institutions to start next month; the full set of CAO points required for different courses in different institutions are available in searchable form here and in a more user-friendly interface here. I have been away on sabbatical for a year so have been out of the loop for admissions. In past years I got an idea of how things were going from Open Days, etc, but not this time round.

This is of course just the first round of offers so things may change significantly over the next week or two. Students now have to decide whether to accept their first-round offer or try to change course. They have until next Tuesday to do this. Departments won’t know how many new students they have for a while yet.

The official low-tech results for Maynooth (in the lower right of the page shown above) are here. Minimum points required for Maynooth’s – and indeed Ireland’s – most important course, MH206 Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are 513 this year, up a from 493 last year. Here’s a graph of how the CAO points for this course have varied over the years since 2010:

The entry level has been rather steady but note that Leaving Certificate grades have been adjusted upwards for the past few years so 500 points in 2024 is not equivalent to the same number in (say) 2016. The above graph doesn’t show how many students were recruited each year either.

MH201 General Science is 350 this year (same as last year); MH204 Physics with Astrophysics is 383 this year, up slightly from 376 last year. MH101 General Arts – the most popular course at Maynooth and indeed in all Ireland – has a first round offer of 307 this year, down from 310 last year. Most courses I have looked at in Maynooth have first-round offers this year similar to or lower than last year. Across all institutions, required points have fallen or remained unchanged for about 57% of courses.

This is interesting because it contrasts with news stories about grade inflation on the Leaving Certificate; I blogged about this here. It is perhaps worth pointing out that the CAO points needed for a course is largely a matter of demand versus capacity rather than academic performance. For the last few years Maynooth University has been recruiting more and more students, putting pressure on accommodation, teaching loads and campus space. It seems likely that the desire to keep this trend going is at least part of the reason for the continued falls in CAO points here. This is probably happening to some extent across the sector, though Maynooth has a more urgent need for more students: to pay for the legions of new managers it has appointed. The race to the bottom will really accelerate when the Covid-era Leaving Certificate adjustment is removed.

Update: here is the traditional supplement from Thursday’s Irish Times:

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Another Late Start to the Academic Year

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , on June 24, 2022 by telescoper

Following on from Monday’s post about uncertainty relating to the start of next academic year, it has now been announced that this summer’s Leaving Certificate results will not be released to students until Friday 2nd September and CAO offers will be made on 8th September.

The timeline for admissions at Ireland’s third level institutions will therefore be roughly the same as last year. Although nothing has been officially announced from Maynooth yet, it seems likely that lectures for first-year students will have to commence a week later than returners just as happened last year.

This is not ideal but at least we have some basis on which to start planning. The start of the current academic year was a bit chaotic to say the least but if this year is a repeat of last at least we have some experience on what worked and what didn’t to guide us. And at least I have something reasonably concrete to say at tomorrow’s Open Day.

From the point of teaching, therefore, things are probably going to be a bit less bad than last year, at least in Maynooth. Some universities were due to start teaching on 5th September so they face a delay of 2-3 weeks.

That doesn’t mean however that things will be better for the students. They will have to wait until September until they know which course they will be on, which will cause considerable stress. On a more practical level it means that that new students will have very little time to find accommodation which is in any case in very short supply.

Now that we know the dates we will make the best plans we can for teaching, but for accommodation there doesn’t seem to be any plan at all. A crisis is looming.

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Offers and Points

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on September 8, 2021 by telescoper
Today’s Irish Times Supplement

Yesterday the Central Admissions Office released the first round offers for entry to Irish Universities; today the details appeared in the Irish newspapers. I don’t usually buy a newspaper on a weekday but I couldn’t resist getting a copy of the Irish Times so I could pore over the information presented in the CAO supplement, of which the picture above shows only a part, rather like I tend to do with the football results or cricket scores.

As expected, the points required for courses are significantly higher than last year. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic the School Leaving Certificate involved a combination of school-based assessment and examinations that obviously worked to the benefit of the students. Looking through the results I struggled to find courses where the points requirement had fallen, but there are a few examples.

Students who have met the requirements for a course they applied to have until 13th September to decide whether to accept. There is then another round of offers starting on 20th September and closing on 22nd September. Here in Maynooth we start teaching new students on 27th September so the CAO process is very truncated this year. I’d imagine that most students will settle on their choices in the first round.

My biggest worry this year is now not to do with the business of offers and acceptances but the mad scramble for accommodation at the start of term. It’s going to be a stressful few weeks for everyone.

Anyway, let’s take a look a the offers for Maynooth. Most students in the Department of Theoretical Physics come either through our denominated programme MH206 Theoretical Physics & Mathematics (TP&M for short) or through MH201 Science (the so-called “Omnibus” Science programme):

The denominated programme in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (MH206) is up 11 points on 521 from last year’s 510 but that’s not an exceptionally high figure in historical terms although it is one of the higher offers for Maynooth. Points for MH201 Science are also up this year to 401 from 360 last year. This is higher than I can remember any previous year I have been here.

We don’t normally publish information on how many offers have been made* so I’ll just say that on the basis of first-round offers it looks like we have done pretty well on TP&M. A good thing about this course is that it doesn’t involve laboratory work so is not constrained by capacity in the way that experimental subjects are. The total number of first-year students on MH201 for example is largely constrained by space in Chemistry labs: students are given a free choice of subjects in Year 1 so we have to allow for them all to choose any subject which leads to a bottleneck. Students on MH201 don’t choose their first-year subjects until they enrol so we won’t find out what numbers are like on this course for some time.

*I know, and could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.

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Points and Offers

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , on September 13, 2020 by telescoper

I spent a bit of time yesterday poring over the CAO offers supplement in the Weekend edition of the Irish Times. The extensive listings, of which the above picture shows just part, show the minimum number of points needed for first round offers at Ireland’s third-level institutions. Students who have met the requirements for a course they applied to have until 16th September to decide whether to accept. There is then another round of offers starting a week later on 23rd September and closing on 25th September.

Much has been made of the increase in points needed for many courses since last year. That is indeed borne out by the table, though many of the increases are relatively small.

The denominated programme in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics at Maynooth University, for example, is up 22 points on 510 from last year’s 488 but that’s not an exceptionally high figure in historical terms.

On the other hand, offers for both Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Trinity College are both down on last year (to 531 from 566 and from 565 to 543, respectively).

There are other courses here and there that have gone down too. I suspect part of the reason for this is that some courses have been allocated extra places and have had to drop their points to recruit the additional students.

Finally I noticed that the first-round points for Equine Business at Maynooth University are unchanged on last year at 357. That may not be the final offer, though. There is probably quite a lot of horse-trading in store…

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