Students from Rathdown School in Dublin celebrate the receipt of their Leaving Cert results
As more students who had undertaken this year’s Leaving Cert applied for STEM subjects in college, the number of points required for science has risen by 10 to 515.
The Irish Government is pushing for students to follow subjects related to science, technology, engineering and maths in a bid to raise job numbers, and this new higher requirement for students has shown a trend whereby it has increased by 18pc over five years, according to The Irish Times.
Releasing its information online, the Central Statistics Office (CAO) shows that in 2009, 52,479 students had put themselves down for science courses, while 33,408 had opted to go for courses in engineering, both of which rank highly in the choices for level eight courses.
In 2013, these figures had jumped to 68,675 in science and 38,336 in engineering.
The rapid rise of course choices in the technology sector have also been attributed to the introduction of the 25 points bonus for opting into higher-level maths, which sees the students receive 25 points just for passing the subject.
In terms of the breakdown of points that colleges are requiring, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and University College Dublin (UCD) remains the highest at 515 points, followed by Dublin City University (DCU) at 460 points.
Engineering courses also saw a raise in the number of required points, with UCD seeing a 20-point rise to 495, while TCD jumped by five points to 470.
