The first round of CAO offers are out this morning and job orientated fields like business and engineering have trumped the arts and sciences in popularity.
At NUI Galway Level 8 courses in business and engineering have seen significant points increases.
Commerce has climbed from 407 points last year to 420, and Commerce (Accounting) with a Global Experience Year has also gone up by nearly 30 points to 473 this year.
While Commerce with French, German, or Spanish stayed steady, the Irish option was a popular choice this year in Ireland’s largest Gaeltacht with Commerce (Gaeilge) climbing by 21 points to 451 this year.
Business courses at GMIT haven’t seen the same rise in demand that they did at NUIG, with points staying roughly where they are across the board.
However, the fields of Engineering and Construction were hot choices at both institutes with points increases at most courses.
Plain Engineering is up over 30 points this year to 432 at NUIG, and GMIT’s offering saw a 25 point jump to 330, while Civil Engineering climbed 29 points at NUIG to 455, and ten points at GMIT to 280.
One area of Engineering that saw no love this year was Energy Engineering with points requirements dropping at GMIT dropping by 30 to 260, and by 14 at NUIG for Energy Systems Engineering to 454.
Construction was another popular option. Project & Construction Management at NUIG rose 32 points from 370 to 402, and Quantity Surveying and Construction Economics at GMIT is up 26 points to 270.
Nursing and midwifery are also in high demand as General Nursing at GMIT has gone up by 20 points to 418 this year and Psychiatric Nursing has also seen a jump from 358 points to 370.
At NUIG the honours degree in Midwifery increased by 18 points, from 433 last year to 451 this year, while General Nursing stayed steady at 445 points.
The increasing popularity of these courses comes as the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has recently warned that Ireland’s A&E’s are more than 200 nurses short of what’s needed to get patients off trolleys.
Other options in the healthcare fields weren’t as demanded, with Applied Social Care taking a significant dive at GMIT from 316 points last year to 270 in 2018.
While Public Health Nutrition, also at GMIT, dropped by 30 points to 370 this year.
Despite Galway being known internationally for the Arts, there was no uptick in their points requirements that would show a surge in demand.
NUIG’s many Arts courses, from the straight BA in Arts to multiple BA Connect programmes, there was no real change in the points requirements this year.
The Sciences at GMIT and NUIG also saw only small shifts up or down this year, with more people applying for the practical STEM courses.
However, not all technology fields were popular, as GMIT’s two Computing courses both dropped 20 points to 280 this year.
A full pullout of CAO points requirements in the first round of offers can be found in this morning’s Irish Times.
The second round of offers from the CAO are due on August 29.
