CAO offers: Colleges make concerted effort to minimise random selection for courses

The decisions taken by Minister for Education Norma Foley to adjust the grades, post marking, of the 58,006 Leaving Cert 2023 students – and specifically the 48,268 who applied for college places through the CAO this year – to bring them in line with the adjusted grades awarded to Leaving Cert candidates in both 2021 and 2022 has had a big effect on the pattern of points requirements required to secure a place on some programmes.

The State Examinations Commission (SEC) revealed last week that the additional marks added to students’ original marks secured following the correction of their papers was 7.9 per cent with the weaker results getting the highest numbers of additional marks.

Given that the grades awarded in 2023 are in line with the recent years, increases and decreases in CAO points requirements revealed today can only be driven by the additional places announced by Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris in the area of medical and paramedical courses, or by changes in the pattern of student applications as revealed in the data published at the beginning of July.

The CAO points requirements for medicine across the five universities, where Mr Harris provided 60 additional places in 2022 and again in 2023, are all down by 4 points in UCC and Trinity and by 7 points in RCSI, UCD and Galway.

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In nursing – where a serious effort is being made to fund additional places in nursing schools in this State and through the purchase of 200 additional nursing places for Republic of Ireland students in Northern Ireland colleges – the points are down considerably. General nursing is down in UCD by 48 points from 451 to 403, and in Letterkenny from 408 to 350 and in Dundalk by 35 from 415 to 380.

In veterinary medicine, which is only offered in UCD, the number of places offered remain unchanged, but demand has dropped by 18 per cent this year leading to a 12 points drop from 601* to 589.

This year colleges have made a concerted effort to minimise the number of courses where random selection occurs. The overall number of programmes at Level 8 where random selection occurs is down from 75 in 2021 to almost 50 in 2022 to under 20 today.

Among those courses still leaving some unfortunate applicants without an offer (where students who have secured the same points as those who received one) are medicine in UCD and Galway, pharmacy and BESS in Trinity, and architecture in UL.

Overall, the Central Applications Office (CAO) offered places to 57,980 applicants. These offers consist of 52,949 Level 8 course offers and 34,126 Level 7/6 course offers.

A total of 31,251 (59 per cent) Level 8 offers are for the applicant’s first preference course, an increase of 5 per cent on 2022, and 45,013 (85 per cent) Level 8 offers are for one of their top three preferences, an increase of 3 per cent on 2022.

A total of 30,879 (90 per cent) Level 7/6 offers are for the applicant’s first preference course, and 33,713 (99 per cent) Level 7/6 offers are for one of their top three preferences.

Applicants who do not receive an offer may wish to check the ‘available places’ facility which reopens on Thursday, August 31st at noon. This facility is also available to new applicants on the completion of an online application form and the payment of a €45 fee on the CAO website. For more information on the CAO offer and acceptance process or the available places facility, applicants should visit cao.ie.

Central Applications Office

The CAO processes applications for undergraduate courses in Irish higher education institutions (HEIs). Decisions on admissions to undergraduate courses are made by the HEIs which instruct the CAO to make offers to successful candidates.

As previously reported, Mr Harris provided over 1,000 additional places in 2022 and a further 460 places in 2023. Obviously, where there are more places available a course’s points should drop, unless demand also increases by a significant degree.

Where there has been an expansion of places, as has occurred in disciplines related to the environment in 2022, and the medical/paramedical places in 2023, the increase in choice has led to a softening of CAO points requirements in related courses.

One factor driving demand for places has been the huge increase in application numbers from students living in EU countries in continental Europe. From a little over 2,000 before Brexit the numbers have ballooned to almost 8,000 in 2023. It is highly likely that the applicant with 618 points who received the last place in economics and finance in UCD was one such applicant as it is mathematically impossible to secure 618 points in the Leaving Cert.

Many of these EU applicants whose CAO points score is a conversion from their own school examination received offers in Round One. But, due to the relatively late timing (in European terms) of this year’s CAO offers, many of these applicants will have already committed to other colleges and these places will be reoffered to those with lowed CAO points scores in Round Two and subsequent rounds.