CAO to offer thousands of college places to mature, deferred applicants

Tomorrow morning, the Central Applications Office (CAO) will offer close to 9,000 degree course programmes to over 7,300 applicants, who are seeking to secure third level course places in the coming academic year.

Applicants can access their offers online at Cao.ie and clicking ‘My Application’.

Who are those receiving an offer of a college place tomorrow?

Over 12,400 adults over 23 years of age applied to the CAO by the February 1st deadline. Each one of them presented their case, based not on their Leaving Certificate result, but on their life experience to date, and their current capacity to sustain themselves through the rigours of a third level degree programme.

Over 6,000 or approximately 50 per cent of these applicants will receive an offer by both post, email and text message Friday morning.

Securing a course in nursing:

Among the successful mature applicants will be those securing one of the 22 per cent (336) of level 8 nursing degree places, reserved for mature applicants.

Since the HSE reduced the overall number of nursing places on offer by 300 to 1,570, as a cost saving measure in 2009, the points requirements for Leaving Certificate applicants have increased considerably to over 400.

These high points requirements have blocked many prospective nursing students in securing CAO places, following completion of the Leaving Certificate. Consequently, several thousand young Irish applicants seek nursing places as mature applicants to the CAO in Ireland or in UK colleges each year. In the current academic year 480 students succeeded in securing a UCAS nursing place, which constitutes almost 25 per cent of all Irish students attending UK colleges.

Delaying entering college for a year:

When the Leaving Certificate results are published in mid-August each year and colleges offer places a few days later, a significant number of students decide for a variety of reasons to seek to defer starting into their chosen programme of study for a year. Colleges accede to these requests in virtually all cases. Those students are required to apply again to the CAO in the current year, listing only their deferred place.

Tomorrow, 1,300 of these applicants who sought a deferral in August 2013 from colleges throughout the country, will be reoffered their reserved place.

Securing your offer of a place:

Several thousand mature applicants will secure offers at both level 8 honours degrees and level 7/6 ordinary degrees/higher certificates. They can of course only accept one of the courses offered to them. All applicants offered places tomorrow, have until 5.15 pm on Thursday July 10th to accept their place.

Any CAO applicant, who receives an offer tomorrow, who does not accept their place either by post or online at cao.ie by Thursday next will forfeit their place and cannot retrieve it in later rounds.

Remaining places offered during August:

Following the completion of tomorrow’s round of offers, the CAO will make a further 2,500 offers on August 1st next, to those who sought places on the Graduate Medical programme, accessed through the Gamsat assessment test, and to those students who have completed Post Leaving Certificate courses leading to FETAC awards.

These PLC options allow students who may not have secured sufficient CAO points for their chosen course in the Leaving Certificate, to secure reserved FETAC places now offered by many colleges across their range of course offerings.

Following the publication of the Leaving Certificate results on August 13th, the CAO will offer the remaining 48,000 places available in the current year on Monday, August 18th to this year’s school leavers.