Jess Casey: Lockdown influencing students' CAO choices

Medicine, midwifery and medical science prove popular choices

Ciarán Ó'Donnchú from Tralee and a student at the the Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí Tralee receives an offer for his first selected option on his CAO application form. 

Did the lockdown this year inspire more students to pursue careers in health, chase their creative passions, inspire new faith, or to fight the climate crisis? The first round of CAO data seems to indicate that the ongoing pandemic has influenced students' career choices, in more ways than one. 

Across the board, 2020 marked a record year that saw cutoff points, the minimum points needed to gain a college place this round, surge, though to varying degrees. More than 60% of honours degrees saw cutoff points increase, a little over 24% fell, and just 5% were static. 

First-round cutoff points also increased for more than 46% of Level 7/6 courses.

Every year medicine proves to be one of the most popular courses, and demand remained as steady as ever. Cutoff points for this round of CAO offers increased for the majority of entryways into the profession, despite extra college places created to facilitate the anticipated additional demand. 

They took the biggest jump at Trinity College Dublin, up by five points, and the lowest at UCD, where cutoff points increased by a single point, a hairline fraction. 

However, medicine wasn’t the only health-related career that students gravitated towards this year. 

More than 86% of health courses saw their cutoff points increase, with particularly noticeable surges in midwifery. Cutoff points this year jumped by 55 at NUIG, while mental health nursing also saw a surge of interest. This led to an increase of cutoff points across courses, up to 50 at DCU.

Elsewhere, the minimum entry points needed to secure a place on the Bachelor of Science in Paramedic Studies at the University of Limerick also soared by 79 points this year, from 313 in 2019 to 392. Medical sciences also saw a boom in interest from students, with the minimum entry points to chemical sciences with medicinal chemistry at Technological University Dublin up by 56 points.

Some of the largest increases in cutoff points can be seen in the creative arts, where entry depends on portfolios or auditions as well as Leaving Cert points. Contemporary art at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and fine art at IT Sligo both saw significant increases in cutoff points while performing arts, design and visual communication degrees were also in demand. 

Meanwhile, cutoff points for drama and theatre studies increased by 69 points at TCD, from 495 points to 564 points this year. 

The CIT Crawford College of Art and Design also saw its cutoff points increase, as did the entry to several music courses at the Cork School of Music. 

Meanwhile, theology, the study of the Christian faith at St Patrick's Maynooth, saw one of the biggest increases in its cutoff entry points out of all courses. It went from 308 to 440. Cutoff points for religion also jumped 21 places at TCD, and philosophy by nine. 

The 'green-wave' also continued this year unabated, with cutoff points increasing at more than 57% of environmental courses. Biological and geographical sciences at Maynooth, a new course focusing on aspects of climate change, attracted cutoff points of 430 in its first year.