The college points race looks like it will be highly competitive once again this year.
The CAO's confirmed the number of applications for places is slightly up on last year.
There has been a further drop in the number of Leaving Cert students applying for medicine and nursing courses, figures from the Central Applications Office (CAO) have shown.
Courses in technology, law, business and engineerings have grown in popularity.
Applications
As reported by The Irish Times, more than 78,000 applications have been received by the CAO, an almost identical figure to last year.
Applications from the North (-13 per cent) and Britain (-3 per cent) have continued to slide, while applications are up from the EU and outside the EU (+17 per cent).
A detailed breakdown of the applications for this year show that many courses in the health area such as medicine (-11 per cent) and nursing (-10 per cent) are down this year. Pharmacy (+10 per cent) and physiotherapy (1 per cent) have bucked the negative trend, however.
Among the biggest decreases was in veterinary medicine (-20 per cent), an area that has commanded very high entry points in recent years.
Languages (-10 per cent) and the environment (-15 per cent) also recorded significant decreases, while social sciences (-7 per cent) and biological and related sciences (-4 per cent) were also down.
Some of the biggest growth was in areas such as agriculture (+18 per cent), law, architecture (both +6 per cent), business (+4 per cent), engineering and journalism (both +4 per cent).
