College offers tomorrow as 38,000 places accepted
More than 38,000 places have been taken up by students offered college courses last week, as thousands more wait for a better — or first — offer tomorrow.
The Central Applications Office (CAO) said 38,085 places that were offered eight days ago were accepted by applicants up to last Friday evening’s deadline. This is 1,047 less than the number at the same stage in 2017.
When these acceptances are combined with third-level places filled through earlier CAO offer rounds — for students not directly competing with those who got Leaving Certificate results a fortnight ago — colleges have filled just over 45,000 places so far this year.
This is over 1,400 fewer than had been taken up at this time a year ago, a 3% fall that is just less than the overall 4% drop in applications to college through CAO this year.
CAO will issue Round 2 offers tomorrow, a day earlier than in previous years, despite giving students three days fewer than last year in which to accept Round 1 offers. The timeline for anyone who gets an offer tomorrow to make a decision is quite short, as places must be accepted by Friday evening, just over 55 hours later.
So far this year, nearly 59,000 out of all 77,425 of this year’s CAO applicants have been offered a place, with between 2,500 and 3,000 people likely to get an offer tomorrow.
However, based on patterns of recent years, only around 1,300 of them will be from among the 18,474 people who have yet to receive any. Most Round 2 offers usually go to those who already received an offer in an earlier round, who then get a higher-preference course than that previously offered to them.
The changes to the offers and acceptances timeline have been introduced this year at the request of colleges, as a growing numbers of courses now begin in early September.
Last year, Round 2 offer recipients had until Wednesday, September 6 to decide if they wished to accept a place on a college course offered to them.
Students considering an appeal of a grade in one or more of the Leaving Certificate subjects will have a chance later this week to view the exam scripts, if they made the request to do so to the State Examinations Commission in time last week.
