Figures suggest tight battle for college places

THE squeeze for places in college looks set to be extremely tight later this week as the numbers already taking up offers is almost 800 more than a year ago.

The Central Applications Office (CAO) registered 37,171 acceptances of the places offered to 49,408 college applicants a week ago, up to yesterday evening’s deadline, in addition to 7,100 people who took up earlier offers. At the same stage a year ago, 36,392 acceptances were made on top of 7,254 earlier acceptances.

The next stage of offers will issued on Thursday morning but the figures suggest fewer than the 5,000 offers made in last year’s second round will get good news. The deadline for accepting the offers made this week is tomorrow week, September 7.