What Is the Trinity College Dublin Acceptance Rate?

Thinking of applying to Trinity College Dublin? The oldest university in Ireland, and certainly one of its most prestigious and high-ranking, Trinity is increasingly sought after by applicants from all over the world.

But what is the Trinity College Dublin acceptance rate? Before you submit your application, you’ll want to know how competitive the admissions process is.

In this guide, we’ll go beyond the unofficial figures quoted online to discover the true acceptance rate at Trinity. We’ll also explore how competitive it is for international applicants, including those from the US, and Trinity’s SAT and ACT entry requirements.

Calculating the Trinity College Dublin Acceptance Rate

Many online sources report that the Trinity College Dublin acceptance rate is 34%. This statistic is unofficial and, as we shall see, inaccurate. Trinity only releases a limited amount of admissions data but a bit of digging across various official sources will reveal a very different acceptance rate.

How many students apply to Trinity College Dublin?

The first step to calculating Trinity’s acceptance rate is working out its total number of applicants. Luckily, Trinity does publish this data. In 2024-25, it received applications from 23,548 CAO applicants.

What does this mean? Well, the CAO is the Central Applications Office – Ireland’s equivalent of UCAS, if you’re familiar with the UK university application system. Applicants to Irish universities from Ireland, the UK, the European Union, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland are all required to apply through the CAO.

In the Irish system, students can apply to up to ten courses through the CAO, including to multiple courses at the same university. There were just under 51,000 applications to Trinity through the CAO – meaning that on average, each student who applied to Trinity through the CAO applied to just over two courses.

To simplify slightly, then, 23,548 European students applied to Trinity last year.

How many students are accepted to Trinity College Dublin?

Now we know how many applied, to calculate Trinity College Dublin’s acceptance rate, we need to know how many got in.

There are 14,290 undergraduate students at Trinity. Most Trinity degrees are now four years, which would mean an intake of roughly 3,600 students per year. In 2016-17, Trinity’s undergraduate intake was 3,220 – allowing for some growth in the decade or so since, that 3,600 estimate seems reasonable.

But how many of these are students who applied through the CAO? We know that 30% of Trinity students are international. Assuming roughly half of these are from elsewhere in Europe (including the UK) with the remainder coming from the rest of the world (including the US), that would give us approximately 3100 admitted CAO students each year.

What is the Trinity College Dublin acceptance rate?

Using these numbers, we can now calculate the Trinity College Dublin acceptance rate for Irish and European applicants:

	Ireland / UK / Europe
Applicants	23548
Admitted	~3100
Acceptance rate	~13%

As you can see, Trinity’s acceptance rate is 13%. This is far lower than the widely quoted figure of 34%, and is in keeping with its status as one of Ireland’s most prestigious and selective universities.

Trinity College Dublin International Acceptance Rate

But what about non-CAO applicants? What is Trinity’s acceptance rate for US and other non-European students? Unfortunately, things get a little trickier here as Trinity doesn’t release any official data about its numbers of non-CAO applicants.

Nonetheless, it appears that admissions are significantly less selective for these students. This is in large part because Trinity’s tuition fees for non-EU students are much higher (20-30,000 EUR vs 5-10,000 EUR for EU students). Universities are businesses as well as educational institutions and with funding tight, many are incentivised to admit more international students, who pay higher fees.

In fact, the university itself states that:

“We receive hundreds of US applications and can accept a much higher percent of qualified applicants than top US schools. Our rankings do not depend on percent of students accepted.”

This statement also gives us another clue to the Trinity College Dublin international acceptance rate. 6.57% of Trinity students come from the US – roughly 240 per year. Given that Trinity say they receive hundreds – rather than thousands – of US applications, that means we can infer that the most US applicants they receive is 999. In that case, at the absolute lowest, Trinity’s acceptance rate for US students would be 24%, and it may be much higher.

That would make the international acceptance rate at Trinity at least twice as high as that for CAO students.

How hard is it to get into Trinity College Dublin?

For applicants from Ireland, the UK, and the rest of Europe, getting into Trinity is very competitive. With an acceptance rate of 13% – slightly lower even than Oxford or Cambridge – it is a very selective university.

For international applicants, the picture seems a bit more rosy. Trinity states that the acceptance rate for US students is much higher than at top US colleges – and the data suggests it is 24% at the absolute lowest (vs 5% for the Ivy League).

Trinity’s SAT requirements are 1250-1400, and its ACT requirements are 27-32. That places it comfortably a rung below the Ivy League or Ivy Plus in terms of selectivity.

Nonetheless, it still remains a very academic and competitive university. Its acceptance rate and entry requirements would place it on a par with other desirable European universities, like Bocconi or IE University – even if it is less selective than Oxbridge or the Ivy League.

Support for your Trinity College Dublin application

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