DEMAND FOR courses at NUI Maynooth is up by 13 per cent, according to the latest CAO figures.
But the Dublin Institute of Technology has seen a 6 per cent decline in demand for some of its courses. Many of these are in the building and related areas.
Other colleges that showed a strong increase in first-preference applications included UL (up 10 per cent) and UCD up over 4 per cent.
A total of 7,073 students out of 56,315 made UCD their first college choice. The UCD figures reflect a strong performance in science, where first preferences were up almost 30 per cent.
Demand for courses at DCU is down by just over 1 per cent, although the college did register an 11 per cent increase in applications last year.
There is now intense competition between third-level colleges for students numbers. With fewer students chasing more and more colleges places, the pressure is on colleges to fill places.
In the run-up to the CAO deadline on February 1st, most colleges invested heavily in marketing campaigns in various media outlets to "sell" their courses to students.
Overall, there has been a 2 per cent increase in the number of students applying for third level this year but there is still considerable spare capacity within the system.
Last night, NUI Maynooth - the big winner in this year's CAO figures - said new degrees in law and arts, business and law, and science education proved highly popular, while existing degree programmes in arts, music, social science and product design witnessed a similar growth trend.
Commenting on the figures, John McGinnity, assistant registrar, said: "We are delighted with this major increase in applications. Coming on the back of the strong growth achieved last year, this is a recognition of the world-class academic staff and courses at NUI Maynooth which are attracting great interest."
The CAO figures show a decline of about 2,000 in the numbers applying for ordinary-level courses and a corresponding increase of 2,000 in the numbers applying for higher-level courses. This reflects the move by many institutes of technology to reassign courses as higher level.
But it also means that the pool of ordinary-level degrees available to students is continuing to shrink.
