And it is a situation mirrored again in 2024. Across all Level 8 degree courses available in the country, the points requirements have fallen for 44% of courses, outstripping the number of courses where the points have risen.

The top headline results from this year’s CAO offers are that students got their top choice in just over half (56%) of offers for degree courses, while 83% of offers were within a candidate’s first three preferences.

In all, over 56,000 candidates have received an offer of a college place on the CAO in Round One. Now, it is decision time as to whether students accept their offer or, for those who didn't receive one or the one they wanted, whether they should wait to see what comes in the second round on September 9. 

Applicants have until next Tuesday, September 3, to accept an offer.

Artificial grade inflation was again applied for the Leaving Cert this year, resulting in over two-thirds of grades increasing across the board. The Government has indicated this will begin to taper off from next year, but it means the class of 2024 are still dealing with its effects.

Nowhere is it more pronounced than for the over 20 courses where some students, who achieved the required level of points, won’t actually be offered a place on the course in Round One of the offers.

These are mostly in the very high-point courses such as medicine, dentistry, engineering and business disciplines.

For two courses, even students who achieved the maximum possible points of 625 faced a lottery for places — Economics and Finance at UCD and Dental Science at Trinity. Such a situation was acknowledged by Taoiseach Simon Harris last year as “cruel”.

This time around, Minister for Further and Higher Education Patrick O'Donovan said that an announcement will be made in the next number of weeks around the expansion of courses in a number of different universitites and institutes — particularly in the areas of medicine and therapies.

Mr O'Donovan also said that he is happy with the CAO system as it is a selection system that is fair and treats everyone the same.

Universities, technological universities, ITs and other institutes have opted into the system because they believe it to be fair and believe in the importance of the anonymity of the students so they are on an even playing field, Mr O'Donovan said.

While some people may say the CAO is not the best system, "it is also not the worst system", he said.

Supply and demand

However, despite the students who sat the Leaving Cert this year doing broadly similar to the class of 2023, this did not mean that the points requirements stayed the same. Each year, supply and demand for courses also plays a role, as well as the points race, in determining how many points are required for a particular course.

While the points total for last year can be a good indicator of the range that a course will be in this time around, many students wouldn’t have been guaranteed to know if they had secured their course until they received that offer from the CAO on Wednesday afternoon.

Overall, it’s a mixed bag in terms of how the points requirements for courses changed this year. The points requirement dropped for 44% of courses but rose for almost 39% of courses, with a further 12% remaining unchanged. In the courses where points increased, this rise was in most cases relatively small. 

Those figures were broadly similar across many disciplines, such as arts, business and ICT courses, with some exceptions.

Within nursing, for example, points decreased for 57% of courses. At Trinity College Dublin, points rose for children’s and general nursing but fell for general nursing, mental health nursing and midwifery.

However, points for nursing courses at University College Cork bucked the overall trend and increased across the board, including a jump of 50 points for intellectual disability nursing (369 points) and 42 points for mental health nursing (409 points).

The points requirement also decreased by over 50% for law courses. The points differences here were often low, with law in UCC rising five points this year, while law in UCD dropped by nine points.

In primary teaching, points only decreased in 35% of courses while falling by 38% for secondary teaching courses.

On the other hand, the points requirement increased for over half of engineering courses. At the University of Galway, biomedical engineering rose by 30 points while engineering rose by 34 points at the University of Limerick.

When considering offers, the CAO’s head of communications Eileen Keleghan had this advice for candidates: “One of the common queries that we receive at the offers stage is around order of preference.

"Applicants who receive a lower preference offer can accept this offer, and it will not prevent them from receiving an offer of a course higher up on their courses list in a later round should a place become available and they are deemed eligible.

"Those who have received an offer in this round should also consider the current offer carefully as it may be the only one they will receive.”