My daughter just got her first choice CAO course - but is three weeks into another degree. Should she switch?

My daughter was disappointed to secure her third choice course from the CAO in early September and, after huge difficulty with accommodation, is three weeks into her course in Dublin. Now she’s in a panic; she just received an offer of her first choice in Galway and wants to switch. If she switches now, she may lose her deposit on her accommodation and incur other costs.

This is a really tough call for you as a family. The costs associated with supporting a child in college have risen exponentially recently, even taking into account the recent Budget measures for students. The prospect of incurring losses on what you have already spent and to start the hunt for another property or room in mid-October is really daunting.

As for college costs, here is where you stand: within a matter of weeks the first half of the Higher Education Authority (HEA) funding which the State allocated to your daughter’s degree journey will be paid over to her current course provider.

Once that happens, if she were to relinquish her course in a few weeks’ time, she would be faced with paying the full economic cost of the first semester of any new course she might start in the next few years. So, it’s now or never in terms of her choices.

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Your daughter has three basic options: (1) stick with her current course and hope that she grows to really enjoy it; (2) accept the offer of her first choice course from the CAO and hope that she can secure accommodation, catch up on the weeks of lectures she has missed to date, and enjoy studying this programme; (3) write to the college within the time-frame of the offer, seek to defer the place for the year, given the proportion of the lectures missed to date and likely difficulties in securing accommodation.

I know that the time-frame involved in making this decision is really tight and neither I nor you can possibly know what the correct option to take is.

What I can say is that she is fortunate that the CAO points requirements for her first choice course have now dropped to the level of her Leaving Cert results. There is no guarantee that they will ever be at that level in 2023 or in any subsequent year. If this course, now on offer to your daughter, is a perfect fit for her long-term career goals, then I would not let it pass by.

Whether she should take it now or defer it until next year is a tougher choice. Chances are that if she dives headlong into the programme, there is a good chance that she can catch up with the support of lecturers. Finding a place to live, in the current climate, may be an even tougher task.