Engineering and construction see big rise in points in CAO
Engineering and construction are among the courses that have seen the biggest rise in points in this year's CAO.
Students across the country found out how many points they got in their Leaving Cert last week.
Today, they discovered if it would be enough to get them a place on their first choice college course.
Demand for courses in areas like construction, law and teaching are up.
While the points for engineering have seen large increases at Trinity and NUI Galway.
Damien Owens from Engineers Ireland says there is a shortage in the industry.
"In the last four or five years, during the recession, students didn't go into those branches of engineering so now consequently there is a shortage of graduates coming out," said Mr Owens.
"So we're seeing with employers that many final year students have three or four job offers before they sit their final exams."
Many arts and computer science courses have seen a drop in demand.
But the points for arts at UCD have rocketed after they cut the number of places available.
It was good news for two-thirds of students, who got their first preference course.
Students have until Friday to confirm their place on their first choice college course.
The CAO Round One offers have been released this morning.
The CAO has issued over 73,500 Round One Offers to 50,746 applicants.
Students can check to see if they have received an offer by logging on to their account using the 'My Application' facility at cao.ie.
Successful applicants will also get an offer notification through email and text message, if they have selected this option on their application form.
Paper offer notices will reach most students today; if someone has not received an offer they will get a 'Statement of Application Record' in the post.
Students have until the August 24 at 5:15pm to accept Round One offers - if they fail to accept by this date their offer will lapse.
DCU academics have found the number of pupils taking higher-level maths has more than doubled.
Dublin City University Professor Lisa Looney says there is also been a rise in the number of teenage girls sitting the higher level paper.
"This is a really good news story," said Prof Looney.
"In 2011 we had just under 4,000 girls, young women, who would have taken higher maths. And this year it was over 8,000.
"So we have a growth of 4,000 in the potential pool of young women who have higher maths and who could take up STEM subjects at third level."
