36,400 snap up first round CAO offers

THE number of college places available for applicants awaiting good news is likely to be less than previous years after almost 36,400 people took up first round offers.

The Central Applications Office (CAO) said the 36,392 acceptances received through its website up to yesterday evening’s deadline is up from 35,669 a year ago when 95% of offers were accepted online. However, the record uptake of places does not include postal acceptances which will be processed in the coming days, which could be up significantly following the technical difficulties experienced with the CAO site over the past week. The gardaí have been sent files about the attack on the site shortly after round one offers were made last Monday week, although disruption has been limited since midweek.

“We are pleased to confirm that there have been no incidents with the website over the weekend or today and operations remained unaffected,” CAO operations manager Joseph O’Grady said last night.

With more than 21,000 people left disappointed without any offer to date, the focus now shifts to second round offers being made on Thursday morning. Last year, just over 2,000 applicants who had no previous offer were given the chance to take up a college place in round two and around the same number were offered a course higher up their preference list than one offered to them in an earlier stage of the process.

Despite slight increases from colleges in the number of spaces on their courses for the coming year, record Leaving Cert points scores and increased competition from mature students and other applicants pushed up the points needed for most courses offered through the CAO last week compared with the first round in 2009.

Almost 7,300 of an estimated 46,000-plus places to be filled were already taken up in earlier CAO offer stages before colleges began allocating places to this year’s school leavers.

Last week, 48,448 – around 62% – of this year’s record 77,628 college applicants got an offer but it was not the first choice course of almost 19,000 of the 35,422 people offered entry to a level 8 (honours bachelor degree) course. The CAO website had 70 level 8 and almost 100 level 7 and 6 courses open to applications from existing and new applicants last night.

* The CAO round two cut-off entry points will be published in Thursday’s Irish Examiner.