The first batch of college place offers for the coming academic year were made on Thursday morning at 6am. These offers are now available to view online at cao.ie.
A total of 80,345 individuals applied to the CAO this year, of whom approximately 46,000 took the Leaving Cert in June 2017.
A total of 6,629 applicants will receive an offer in this initial round. Of these, 4,968 will receive an offer of a place on a level 8 honours degree and 2,951 will receive a level 7/6 offer, on either an ordinary degree or higher-cert programme. Some 1,290 applicants will receive an offer on both the level 8 and level 7/6 lists.
Of those 80,345 applicants, those who deferred a place last August, and now want to take up that place are receiving their offer this morning.
Over 10,000 people over 23 applied to the CAO in January 2017. They were assessed and interviewed for their suitability to take up a third-level place. The successful applicants are receiving their offer this morning.
Also receiving an offer are those over 23 who applied for entry to mature nursing and midwifery. The final group of applicants to receive an offer are those from outside Ireland who will need to make visa or other arrangements before taking up a college place.
The successful applicants will also receive a paper offer notice by post, an email and a text message (if they have selected this option) with details of their offer. The “reply date” by which this initial round of offers must be accepted is Thursday, July 13th, at 5.15pm. Failure to accept an offer by the reply date will result in the offer being cancelled.
Next round
A further round of over 3,200 offers will take place on August 4th next, for additional mature applicants, deferred and access applicants, graduate entry medicine applicants, and applicants presenting QQI FET/FETAC qualifications, for entry to courses with a quota for QQI FET/FETAC applicants.
For all other current year CAO applicants, mainly those who took the Leaving Cert in June 2017, plus thousands of other former school students who sat this exam in the past few years, and have decided to seek a college place this year, over 50,000 offers will be issued on Monday, August 21st, following the publication of the Leaving Cert results on Wednesday, August 16th.
That main round of offers will be available to view online from 6am on August 21st, and successful applicants will also receive offer notification by email and text message if they have selected this option, as well as by post. The reply date for round one offers is August 28th at 5.15pm.
The final published round of over 2,000 offers, known as “round two” although it is in fact round four, will be available to view online from August 31st at 6am. After that date, any places which become available up to the closing of the current year’s CAO process in mid-October, will be made individually to students by both post and email.
Over the next two weeks, currently registered students who have either failed their existing course exams or have decided that their current course is the wrong one for them have the option to reapply to the CAO by July 22nd for a place in the coming academic year.
Students in that situation need to go to the registrar’s office of their current college and receive from them the paperwork to apply for a new course place for the coming year.
They then must take the fee payment to their local bank and pay €50 to the CAO. Details of the entire procedure for these current college students are available on page 15 of the CAO handbook, available online at cao.ie.
