Trinity College, Dublin

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:can someone compare UCD and Trinity - maybe by comparing to American schools. Like is it BC and BU? or .. something?

Trinity was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I to be modeled on Oxford and Cambridge. It was an explicitly Anglican institution, so the Catholic Church founded UCD (originally “Catholic University”) in the mid-19th century to promulgate Catholic teachings.

Trinity is the old upper-crust institution, and UCD’s tradition is more Irish republican. UCD is also much bigger than Trinity, and it’s located outside the city center. So Harvard and…UMass? I don’t know if that totally tracks, but it’s probably directionally right?

Except if you are actually Irish and in Ireland, Trinity has a reputation for being where the kids from certain schools go, especially when they don’t get in to UCD. I don’t want to name specific schools but there’s a group of expensive, wealthy schools where kids from D4, Dalkey, etc go and those all feed into Trinity but the reality is most of those kids also try for UcD and don’t get matched. Trinity is by far more beautiful and more of a traditional looking campus, but UCD is more rigorous and a better education and better reputation, esp for b-comm, accounting, etc
I agree that the Irish system is nice in that you don’t have to take classes in things you’re not interested in, but it’s awful if you don’t know exactly what you want when you are 17 and apply. You do get pigeon holed into something and there’s no changing. My niece applied for something and got matched w/ something similar instead. She hates it but there’s no way to switch. We are dual citizens and have lived back and forth so I’ve seen a lot of kids slog through college once they realize what they’re in is not something they’re passionate about. I know very few high school kids who have had enough experience to be making such final decisions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

From my kid's perspective, the disadvantage isn't lack of core curriculum or basic requirements--I agree that's great--but rather inability to take many classes outside your selected course. Double majoring is not a thing. TCD is not the place if you want the ability to study across disciplines.

TCD has many dual major type options which they call “joint honours” programs. For example, computer science and business, business and a language, mathematics and economics, music, language, or philosophy. There are many interesting combinations available!

The inclusion of a second major is still exclusionary to 100s of classes that are otherwise available in most US colleges…. Drama, cinema, data science, kinesiology, sports marketing, informatics, literally everything and anything else… these types of classes cannot be accessed outside of a major in Ireland or the UK. It is the very difference between our two education systems. Their system teaches narrowly. Ours teaches broadly.

The US system is largely an extension of High School, like a boarding school where most kids share rooms. In Ireland and the UK it is actual advanced, intellectual study requiring maturity and independence. And most rooms are singles.

This is a ridiculous statement. As someone who has studied in both, I would actually say the Irish system is one where you can do quite well purely on memorization. You are not challenged or pushed and the writing level required is quite basic. If you aren’t in humanities then they have very low requirements for writing standards.
I suppose you could say students need to be mature in that most are on their own to find accommodation but the flip side is that many live at home or at the very least go home every weekend. I would have been hard pressed to find many first year Irish students who had done their own laundry even once.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:can someone compare UCD and Trinity - maybe by comparing to American schools. Like is it BC and BU? or .. something?

Trinity was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I to be modeled on Oxford and Cambridge. It was an explicitly Anglican institution, so the Catholic Church founded UCD (originally “Catholic University”) in the mid-19th century to promulgate Catholic teachings.

Trinity is the old upper-crust institution, and UCD’s tradition is more Irish republican. UCD is also much bigger than Trinity, and it’s located outside the city center. So Harvard and…UMass? I don’t know if that totally tracks, but it’s probably directionally right?

Except if you are actually Irish and in Ireland, Trinity has a reputation for being where the kids from certain schools go, especially when they don’t get in to UCD. I don’t want to name specific schools but there’s a group of expensive, wealthy schools where kids from D4, Dalkey, etc go and those all feed into Trinity but the reality is most of those kids also try for UcD and don’t get matched. Trinity is by far more beautiful and more of a traditional looking campus, but UCD is more rigorous and a better education and better reputation, esp for b-comm, accounting, etc
I agree that the Irish system is nice in that you don’t have to take classes in things you’re not interested in, but it’s awful if you don’t know exactly what you want when you are 17 and apply. You do get pigeon holed into something and there’s no changing. My niece applied for something and got matched w/ something similar instead. She hates it but there’s no way to switch. We are dual citizens and have lived back and forth so I’ve seen a lot of kids slog through college once they realize what they’re in is not something they’re passionate about. I know very few high school kids who have had enough experience to be making such final decisions

So is UCD more pre-professional and Trinity more arts/humanities/“life of the mind”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:can someone compare UCD and Trinity - maybe by comparing to American schools. Like is it BC and BU? or .. something?

Trinity was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I to be modeled on Oxford and Cambridge. It was an explicitly Anglican institution, so the Catholic Church founded UCD (originally “Catholic University”) in the mid-19th century to promulgate Catholic teachings.

Trinity is the old upper-crust institution, and UCD’s tradition is more Irish republican. UCD is also much bigger than Trinity, and it’s located outside the city center. So Harvard and…UMass? I don’t know if that totally tracks, but it’s probably directionally right?

Except if you are actually Irish and in Ireland, Trinity has a reputation for being where the kids from certain schools go, especially when they don’t get in to UCD. I don’t want to name specific schools but there’s a group of expensive, wealthy schools where kids from D4, Dalkey, etc go and those all feed into Trinity but the reality is most of those kids also try for UcD and don’t get matched. Trinity is by far more beautiful and more of a traditional looking campus, but UCD is more rigorous and a better education and better reputation, esp for b-comm, accounting, etc
I agree that the Irish system is nice in that you don’t have to take classes in things you’re not interested in, but it’s awful if you don’t know exactly what you want when you are 17 and apply. You do get pigeon holed into something and there’s no changing. My niece applied for something and got matched w/ something similar instead. She hates it but there’s no way to switch. We are dual citizens and have lived back and forth so I’ve seen a lot of kids slog through college once they realize what they’re in is not something they’re passionate about. I know very few high school kids who have had enough experience to be making such final decisions

This is a weird take. Globally Trinity is considered the more superior institution. Just google all the rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I agree that the Irish system is nice in that you don’t have to take classes in things you’re not interested in, but it’s awful if you don’t know exactly what you want when you are 17 and apply. You do get pigeon holed into something and there’s no changing. My niece applied for something and got matched w/ something similar instead. She hates it but there’s no way to switch. We are dual citizens and have lived back and forth so I’ve seen a lot of kids slog through college once they realize what they’re in is not something they’re passionate about. I know very few high school kids who have had enough experience to be making such final decisions

This isn't really unique to Trinity or Ireland though. I am from the UK and it was the same. It was never an issue for anyone I knew. With the exception of engineering, I don't really know anyone that is working in a field dependent on their major. I studied history and became an economist. It wouldn't have mattered if I had studied geography or biology instead. So your degree subject isn't really a "final decision" that determines the rest of your life, for most people it is pretty irrelevant. They then go on to become civil servants or work in finance or business or get advanced degrees to become lawyers or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I agree that the Irish system is nice in that you don’t have to take classes in things you’re not interested in, but it’s awful if you don’t know exactly what you want when you are 17 and apply. You do get pigeon holed into something and there’s no changing. My niece applied for something and got matched w/ something similar instead. She hates it but there’s no way to switch. We are dual citizens and have lived back and forth so I’ve seen a lot of kids slog through college once they realize what they’re in is not something they’re passionate about. I know very few high school kids who have had enough experience to be making such final decisions

This isn't really unique to Trinity or Ireland though. I am from the UK and it was the same. It was never an issue for anyone I knew. With the exception of engineering, I don't really know anyone that is working in a field dependent on their major. I studied history and became an economist. It wouldn't have mattered if I had studied geography or biology instead. So your degree subject isn't really a "final decision" that determines the rest of your life, for most people it is pretty irrelevant. They then go on to become civil servants or work in finance or business or get advanced degrees to become lawyers or whatever.

This was true when I was at university in the UK and in my career thereafter too, but I do think things have shifted slightly in some industries. There are now more vocational courses leading to specific careers, and there's the huge uptick in students wanting to study Psychology for instance, which has a few very clear lines of employment, education, HR, clinical psychology, neuroscience, criminality.