The closing date for accepting Round One CAO (Central Applications Office) offers is tomorrow (Wednesday, September 16).
Successful applicants will have until 3:00pm to accept offers, having received them last Friday (September 11).
It has been a critical number of weeks for many third-level hopefuls after the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic to the Leaving Certificate exams.
There was an increase in applicants receiving offers this year, as in 2019, there were 51,513 applicants that received an offer.
‘Carefully consider any offers’
Eileen Keleghan, CAO communications officer, has asked applicants to “carefully consider any offers received in this round”.
“One of the common queries that we [CAO] receive at the offers stage is around order of preference,” Keleghan said.
“Applicants are reminded that if they receive a lower preference offer, they can accept this offer and it will not prevent them from receiving an offer of a course higher up on their courses list in a later offer round if a place becomes available and they are deemed eligible.”
Round Two offers will be available to view on the CAO website from 10:00am on Wednesday (September 23).
The reply date by which Round Two offers must be accepted is Friday (September 25) at 12:00pm. Offers are then issued on a weekly basis to fill any remaining places.
Leaving Cert students
Leaving Cert students received their results through the calculated grades process due to the disruption to the usual examination process by Covid-19.
The overall number of students due to sit the examinations in 2020 was 60,419.
Of those, 57,569 students followed the Leaving Cert (Established) Programme, of which 13,470 followed the Leaving Cert Vocational Programme.
A further 2,850 candidates followed the Leaving Cert Applied Programme.
A number of agriculture-related courses increased in points, as was expected due to the average marks across all subjects and at all levels in the Leaving Cert having increased on average by 4.4% on last year.
- University College Dublin: 456 (2020); 425 (2019);
- University College Cork: 496 (2020); 473 (2019);
- Waterford Institute of Technology: 377 (2020); 378 (2019);
- Institute of Technology Tralee: 308 (2020); 331 (2019);
- Letterkenny Institute of Technology (Agriculture): 307 (2020); 300 (2019).