Dublin Leaving Cert students don't have a shortage-of-choice problem — they have the opposite one. Between City of Dublin ETB, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire ETB, Trinity, UCD, TU Dublin, DCU and a dense apprenticeship market, narrowing down a CAO list here is genuinely harder than in most of the country. This page sets out what's actually on offer across the city, and where the CAO Course Match Test fits in if you want a structured way through it.
Take the CAO Course Match Test — €34.99Figures a Dublin CAO applicant or parent would actually want, each checked against an official or reputable source.
Most counties have one Education and Training Board. Dublin has two, drawn along a boundary that roughly follows the old city limits — and which one covers your course affects nothing about the qualification, but everything about which prospectus you should actually be reading.
Covers Dublin city from Ringsend to Ballyfermot. Runs 16 colleges of further education plus 2 training centres, serving roughly 30,000 learners a year — about 12,000 full-time and 17,500 part-time.
Covers Fingal, South Dublin, and Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown — a combined population base of more than 865,000 people. On 10 November 2025, DDLETB rebranded and unified its further education colleges under a single banner, "Dublin College," spanning 32 campuses.
Dublin's CAO points races are famously steep partly because so many high-demand courses sit within a 20-minute commute of each other. Here's what's actually verifiable about the scale involved.
Ireland's oldest university, created by royal charter in 1592. Today it enrols around 22,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students across all major disciplines, from the city centre campus students walk past on College Green.
Source: tcd.ie/aboutUCD traces back to the Catholic University of Ireland, which opened its doors on 3 November 1854 under John Henry Newman. It's now one of the country's largest universities, with a student body of roughly 37,900 across its Belfield campus.
Source: ucd.ieThe Institute of Art, Design and Technology is a smaller, specialist option — around 2,500 students, and home to a National Film School rated among the top 10 animation schools in Europe. Worth knowing about if art, design, psychology or media is the direction you're weighing against a bigger university course.
Source: iadt.ieCSO Census 2022 recorded nearly 480,000 people in Dublin with a third-level qualification, up from just over 398,000 in 2016 — and almost 16,000 Dubliners hold a PhD, 42% of every PhD holder in the country.
Source: cso.ie press statementA CAO offer isn't the only credible outcome for a Dublin Leaving Cert student, and increasingly it isn't even the default one for students aiming at finance, tech or biopharma careers — three sectors where Dublin genuinely leads the country.
The Central Bank of Ireland, headquartered in Dublin, runs a two-year International Financial Services Apprenticeship with National College of Ireland — a Level 6 Higher Certificate where apprentices work four days a week inside the Central Bank and study one day at NCI. It's a paid, earn-while-you-learn route straight into financial services regulation, without CAO points as the gatekeeper. Source: centralbank.ie
Delivered through FIT, with college-based training hosted through local Education and Training Boards, this apprenticeship feeds directly into the multinational tech cluster clustered around the Dublin docklands and Sandyford — an alternative to a computer science CAO course for students who want to be earning and coding from year one. Source: fit.ie
From September 2026, TU Dublin and BioPharmaChem Ireland are launching a new two-year Level 6 Higher Certificate apprenticeship — Bio Process/Chemical Process Technician — combining paid workplace learning with study at TU Dublin's School of Chemical and Biopharmaceutical Sciences. It's a direct response to a sector that grew more than 60% between 2016 and 2022, with demand projected for over 21,000 additional biopharma jobs by 2027 — many of them in and around Dublin, where the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) has run its dedicated biopharma training facility in Blackrock since 2011. Source: siliconrepublic.com · nibrt.ie
None of these require ruling out a CAO application first — plenty of students in Dublin apply for both and decide once offers land in August.
With this many institutions, ETBs and apprenticeship routes sitting inside one city, "just look at the CAO handbook" stops being useful advice fairly quickly. The CAO Course Match Test is a psychometric and interest-based assessment built to cut through that — it takes what you're actually good at and interested in, and matches it against real CAO course content rather than course titles or reputations.
A structured psychometric assessment covering interests, working style and strengths, matched against live CAO course data. Built by CourseCompass Education Limited, an Irish EdTech company, for Leaving Cert students choosing between Dublin's universities, further education colleges and apprenticeships.
Independent assessment. Not affiliated with the CAO, the Department of Education, or any university or ETB named on this page.
The CAO Course Match Test is a psychometric assessment that scores your interests, strengths and working style against the actual CAO course list, then ranks the courses most likely to suit you. It isn't Dublin-specific in its method, but the course universe it draws from includes Dublin's dense cluster of CAO options — Trinity, UCD, TU Dublin, DCU, RCSI, National College of Ireland and more — so a Dublin student typically sees a wider, more competitive spread of results than someone applying from a county with one or two nearby institutions.
Dublin is unusually well served for further education. City of Dublin ETB alone runs 16 colleges of further education across the city teaching roughly 30,000 learners a year, and Dublin and Dún Laoghaire ETB unified its 32 FE and adult education campuses under the single "Dublin College" banner in November 2025. Between the two, you can move from a QQI Level 5 or 6 course into year two of a related degree via the CAO's further education entry routes, without repeating your Leaving Cert.
City of Dublin ETB (CDETB) covers Dublin city itself — from Ringsend to Ballyfermot — with 16 further education colleges and 2 training centres. Dublin and Dún Laoghaire ETB (DDLETB) covers the three surrounding local authority areas: Fingal, South Dublin, and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, a population base of more than 865,000. Both are statutory education and training boards offering QQI-accredited courses, so the qualification carries the same weight either way — the difference is simply geography and which campuses are convenient for you.
Yes, and Dublin has some genuinely distinctive ones. The Central Bank of Ireland runs a two-year Level 6 International Financial Services Apprenticeship with National College of Ireland, where apprentices work four days a week at the Central Bank and study one day at NCI. In tech, FIT runs the Software Development Associate Apprenticeship (college-based training hosted through local Education and Training Boards), feeding directly into Dublin's multinational tech cluster. And from September 2026, TU Dublin and BioPharmaChem Ireland are launching a new two-year Level 6 Higher Certificate apprenticeship for Bio Process/Chemical Process Technicians, responding to a sector that grew over 60% between 2016 and 2022. None of these require you to give up on a CAO offer — some students apply for both and decide later.
CourseCompass Education Limited is the company behind both. coursecompass.ie is the national platform. This site is a Dublin-focused resource covering the CDETB/DDLETB further education system, Dublin's universities and apprenticeship routes, and local CSO data — written for a Dublin Leaving Cert student or parent specifically, rather than a national audience. The CAO Course Match Test itself is the same underlying assessment either way.
No. It is an independent psychometric and interest-matching tool built by CourseCompass Education Limited, a private Irish EdTech company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or run by the CAO, the Department of Education, or any ETB or university named on this page. Always confirm points, deadlines and entry requirements directly on cao.ie.