CAO 2023: Half of college applicants likely to get first choice despite high points

About half of this year’s college applicants are expected to secure their top course preference when offers issue on Wednesday afternoon despite high CAO points this year, according to higher education sources.

A majority of applicants — an estimated 80 per cent — will likely secure one of their top-three course preferences in this year’s CAO round one college offers.

Senior academics say a combination of steady year-on-year application numbers and a further year of inflated grades means trends from last year look likely to remain this year. Last year, 52 per cent secured their first CAO preference, while 82 per cent received one of their top-three choices.

However, universities expect to have to use random selection, or a lottery, to select applicants in some high points courses this year. Among those courses likely to be affected are dentistry, economics and finance, and management science.

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This is due to the bunching of students with top grades on foot of inflated Leaving Cert grades this year. Random selection was used in almost 50 courses last year, a pattern likely to be seen again.

Controversially, random selection was used in a handful of courses last year with CAO entry points of 625 — the maximum points — which meant some top-performing students missed out on their dream courses.

Overall, there are a total of 84,226 applicants this year, a similar figure to last year (84,321).

While points are expected to remain steady overall, they will move up or down depending on shifts in supply and demand for individual courses.

Some officials are hopeful, for example, that points will fall in a number of medical and paramedical courses where more than 460 new places have been created on the direction of Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris this year.

In addition, CAO “change of mind” data based on students’ course preferences — as of the July 1st deadline — shows a small decline in applications for nursing and medicine courses.

By contrast, the number of college applications for courses where there is strong job growth — such as architecture, construction, business and engineering — have increased this year. This increases the chance of points rising in these areas.

Separately, new figures show strong interest in a “groundbreaking” new access route that allows school leavers to obtain a university degree outside the traditional CAO points system.

From September, successful applicants can enrol in one of 23 courses in areas such as nursing, computer science, engineering and business

Each course will be delivered by a further education provider in collaboration with a university.

There have been 670 applications so far for up to 500 places.

Nursing has proved most popular so far with more than 100 applications for the nursing studies course offered at Sligo College of Further Education. Course participants are due to progress to Atlantic Technological University in year two at one of its campuses at Letterkenny, Castlebar or St Angela’s.

The programmes are being available through an online portal (nto.ie) managed by the National Tertiary Office.

Remaining vacancies

A majority of CAO applications this year, meanwhile, are presenting with Leaving Cert results secured last week, while there are also thousands with results from previous years, mature applicants or applicants from further education courses.

Several thousand mature applicants and from further education routes have already secured college places in earlier CAO offer rounds.

College offers will be released online from 2pm on Wednesday and must accept or reject their college offer by September 5th.

Round two offers — where universities fill any remaining vacancies — will issue on September 11th from 2pm.

After round two, the “available places” facility will operate which allows applicants to access unfilled places in courses that remain once all offers have been made.

There is no CAO entry point threshold, however, applicants are required to meet minimum subject entry requirements.