Points steady as 50,000 offered third-level places

The Leaving Certificate points for most courses have fallen or stayed unchanged as almost 50,000 people are offered a third-level place this morning.

While hundreds of the 1,370 courses need more points than last year, the increases are not on the same scale as last year, when the new bonus points for honours maths saw widespread big jumps in entry standards. Although about 1,700 more students passed higher-level maths in last week’s Leaving Certificate results, numbers of students with more 500 points — before bonus points were added — were down on last year.

Many of the biggest increases were in the computing, science, and engineering fields, with University College Cork’s computer science degree up 90 to 430 points. Courses mixing business and languages face increases of up to 60 points at many colleges.