Two subjects, studied to the same depth, chosen from twenty six. And the part nobody tells applicants: you can carry three or even four subjects through first year and only commit to two at the end of it.
You name two subjects when you apply through the CAO, and UCD guarantees you a place in both of them. At the start of first year you can add a third subject, or a fourth, or electives. At the end of first year you commit to the final two.
So the CAO choice is a starting position, not a decision. A student torn between History, Politics and Spanish can take all three in first year and decide in May with a year of actual lectures behind them rather than a prospectus. Very few applicants realise this, and it is the single best reason to choose DN520 over a single subject degree.
Not every pair is possible. The subjects are timetabled in nine groups and you can take at most one subject from each group, so some combinations are ruled out by the clock rather than by policy. UCD publishes a Course Combination Grid in the prospectus. Check yours on the grid before you build a CAO list around it. Whether individual subjects are capped is not published anywhere we could find.
UCD expects a first year student to be studying three, or possibly four, different subjects, and one of them may come from outside Arts and Humanities altogether.
The recommended shape is twenty credits in your first subject and twenty in your second. The remaining twenty are yours to place.
| The flexible 20 credits | What it buys you |
|---|---|
| More of your two | Depth early, and the safest route if you are already sure |
| 10 or 15 credits in a third subject | A real trial of a third option, enough to carry it forward if you want to |
| 5 or 10 in a fourth | A taste of something you have never studied, at low cost |
| One elective, 5 credits | Anything in UCD: Business, Science, Social Science, a language |
First year students select their elective before spring term starts.
This is the detail that decides whether the flexibility is real. You cannot carry a subject forward on curiosity alone. Most subjects require at least ten credits at Level 1 in that subject, and several name the exact modules.
| To carry this into Stage 2 | You need in Stage 1 |
|---|---|
| Most subjects | At least 10 Level 1 credits in that subject |
| English | Both core modules |
| History | HIS10390 plus one other |
| Music | MUS10150 and MUS10190 |
| Mathematics | All four core modules |
Plan the third subject properly or it is not a third subject. Ten credits is two modules. Take five credits of something because it looked interesting and you have had an interesting term, not an option. If you are genuinely keeping three alive, give the third one at least ten.
Progression needs the full 60 credits, and you may carry no more than 10 credits of an incomplete stage. Stage 2 is then 25 credits in each subject plus a 10 credit elective.
Grouped by the kind of work rather than alphabetically, because the useful question is not which of these sounds nice but which two go together.
FrenchGerman SpanishItalian PortugueseIrish, Gaeilge GreekLatin
Lead to translation and localisation, EU institutions, international business, teaching, and the year abroad on the BA International. H4 in French or Irish is recommended to take those two.
EnglishDrama Studies Film StudiesMusic Art HistoryIrish Folklore Irish StudiesLinguistics
Lead to publishing, media and broadcasting, arts administration, galleries and museums, teaching, marketing and communications. Music needs H4 Music or ABRSM Grade V theory.
HistoryPhilosophy SociologyArchaeology Celtic Civilisation Greek and Roman Civilisation Geography
Lead to the civil service and public policy, law conversion, heritage and museums, journalism, research, teaching, and NGO work. Archaeology and Geography also lead into commercial consultancy through planning and development.
MathematicsStatistics Information and Communication Studies
The under-used corner of DN520. Pairing Statistics or Maths with a humanities subject produces a graduate who can both handle data and write, which is rarer than either alone. H3 Maths is recommended for both. Information and Communication Studies leads to librarianship, information management, UX research and digital archiving.
Six of these are shared with DN700. Archaeology, Geography, Philosophy, Sociology, Information and Communication Studies and Statistics appear in both, and UCD files their course pages under DN700. That is a UCD inconsistency rather than an error, but it does mean a search can land you on the wrong code. If you want one of those six alongside a language or English, DN520 is your route. If you want two of them together, look at DN700 first.
Ask at the open day: which group is each of my two subjects in, how many credits do I need in a third subject to keep it alive, and has any subject been closed to new students in recent years.
Checked against UCD on 24 August 2026. Sources: the UCD course record for the BA Joint Honours programme, the UCD Arts and Humanities Prospectus 2026, the UCD Arts and Humanities progression requirements for Stage 2, the UCD School of Music first year DN520 page, and myUCD. Several UCD first year guide pages are built in a way that returns no content to anything other than a browser, so where a figure could not be read directly it is marked above rather than stated.