CAO 2023: Points for nursing, medicine and health courses may drop

CAO points requirements for some medicine, nursing and other health-related courses may fall when offers issue to thousands of college applicants this afternoon.

With demand for such courses falling and additional college places in the disciplines due to come on stream next month, universities are hopeful of a drop in the entry requirements for some courses.

Overall, there is a total of just more than 84,000 CAO applicants this year, a similar figure to last year, who will find out online at 2pm whether they have course offers or not.

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Most are presenting with Leaving Cert results secured last week, while there are thousands of others with results from previous years, mature applicants or applicants progressing from further education courses.

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While points are expected to remain relatively steady overall, they will move up or down depending on shifts in supply and demand for individual courses.

Universities expect to have to use random selection, or a lottery, to select applicants in some high-points courses again this year. The courses likely to be affected include dentistry, pharmacy, management science and some in the business area.

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This is due to the bunching of students with top grades on foot of Leaving Cert grades being inflated this year. Random selection was used for almost 50 courses last year, a pattern likely to be seen again.

Random selection was controversially used for a handful of courses last year with CAO entry points of the maximum 625 points. This meant some top-performing students missed out on their desired courses. This is likely to happen again this year.

Some higher education sources are hopeful that points will fall in many health courses where more than 415 new places have been created this year.

It follows a move by Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris and Minister for Health Simon Donnelly to increase graduates in these areas to meet skills gaps.

Of the new healthcare places, 205 relate to nursing and midwifery while 60 are in medicine and 50 are across the disciplines of occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech and language therapy.

In addition, latest CAO “change of mind” data based on students’ course preferences shows a year-on-year decline in applications for nursing and medicine courses overall.

This may be a return to more normal trends after application numbers for health courses surged at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

By contrast, the number of college applications for courses where there is strong job growth – such as architecture, construction, business and engineering – has increased this year, which increases the chance of points rising in these areas.

Overall, higher education sources estimate that about half of this year’s college applicants are expected to secure their top course preference when offers issue on despite CAO points being high again this year.

A majority of applicants – an estimated 80 per cent – will likely secure one of their top-three course preferences in this year’s CAO round one college offers.

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Senior academics say a combination of steady year-on-year application numbers and a further year of inflated grades means trends from last year look likely to remain.

Last year, 52 per cent secured their first CAO preference, while 82 per cent received one of their top-three choices.

CAO applicants must accept or reject their college offer by September 5th. Round two offers – where universities fill any remaining vacancies – will issue on September 11th from 2pm.

After round two, the “available places” facility will operate which allows applicants to access unfilled places that remain once all offers have been made. There is no CAO entry point threshold for these places, but applicants are required to meet minimum subject entry requirements.