Applicants decline half of CAO second-round offers

ABOUT half of the 3,000 people offered a college place by the Central Applications Office (CAO) last Friday have declined to accept them.

Although final figures were unavailable last night, the CAO reported that 1,342 applicants had accepted second-round offers up to lunchtime yesterday.

Although postal acceptances might not yet have been logged at that stage, the numbers suggest that many people were satisfied with a course offer received earlier, even though it might have been farther down their list of preferences.

Of 3,018 people offered a place last week, more than 2,000 had already been offered a place on a course for which they had applied.

More than 80 honours bachelor degree (level 8) courses were still offering vacant places to applicants through the CAO website last night, with places on more than 100 ordinary bachelor degrees (level 7) and higher certificates also open for applications.

These were courses for which not enough applications were received, or not all those with sufficient points had all the minimum grade requirements in certain subjects.

Meanwhile, the deadline for students appealing a grade in their Leaving Certificate results this year passed yesterday evening.

The number of appeals received by the State Examinations Commission (SEC) is not likely to be available until the weekend but it is not expected to vary from previous years.

About one in five of the 9,500 appeals lodged last year resulted in an upgrade.

An SEC spokesperson said that about 15 people had contacted the commission on Monday with concerns that they did not receive an email confirmation after using the online service to pay the appeal fee. Most people using the SEC website would have received a confirmation page but some of those who did not, used the service during a brief technical interruption.

The commission spokes- person said that all appeals received from schools would be dealt with and that online payments could be verified with confirmation of the credit card details used.

The SEC will issue this year’s Junior Certificate results to almost 58,000 candidates at schools and other centres next Wednesday.