Round-two college offers issued by the Central Applications Office (CAO) on Monday was largely a tidying-up operation. For some applicants, it meant being offered a place on their favoured course having lost out on random selection in round one.
For a number of other students, including potentially new applicants, there was a chance to avail of three highly sought after disciplines where new courses were approved after the cut-off deadline of July 1st.
Maynooth University’s new general nursing degree proved highly attractive over the past week as applicants inserted it into their CAO course preference list above anything they have been offered to date. The minimum CAO points required are 466, the highest among all the general nursing degrees offered in round one.
In contrast, those applicants who listed the new physiotherapy degree at Atlantic Technological University (ATU) in Letterkenny and pharmacy at ATU in Sligo can count themselves fortunate. This is because they secured their places at considerably lower points than the equivalent courses offered elsewhere in round one.
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Physiotherapy in Letterkenny is offered at 531. This is in contrast to the next lowest, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), where it was offered at 566, 35 points higher. Similarly, pharmacy in Sligo is offered at 577, 12 points lower than the 589 required in RCSI in round one.
In contrast to these colleges, the main city universities offer only a handful of round-two places. Dublin City University (DCU), University of Galway and University of Limerick (UL) seem to avoid the practice of making offers in round two if at all possible.
DCU have cleared the random selection for biological sciences at 466 and physical education with mathematics at 499. University of Galway has reduced the points requirements for Earth and ocean sciences from 422 to 403, and in midwifery from 455* to 434. The asterisk (*) denotes random selection was used on these points,
In UL, psychology came down three points to 496, occupational therapy was down two to 541, general nursing is down by one point to 411 and midwifery is down by 14 points to 430.
[ CAO issues second round offers to more than 3,000 studentsOpens in new window ]
UCC, UCD, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and particularly Maynooth University have made offers across a wide range of their programmes, but in the vast majority of cases points have moved down by one or two on round-one offers. In many cases, this has triggered a random selection process on the new points score required. For example, BESS at Trinity went down one point from 566 to 565*, as did Commerce in UCD from 555 to 554* and Veterinary Science from 590 to 589*.
In round one, only two programmes – both in Trinity – were required to use random selection at 625 points, dental science and Management Information Systems (MIS). TCD cleared the random list at 625 for MIS in round two, leaving dental science as the only programme in Ireland where an applicant with a perfect score may have missed their first choice. I say “may” as the new dental faculty in RCSI located in a brand new facility in Sandyford, Dublin offered places at 613 in round one.
Overall, the Central Applications Office (CAO) issued 3,370 offers to applicants in round two on Monday. A total of 2,364 level 8 offers, and 1,006 level 7/6 offers, were made to 3,024 CAO applicants in this round. Some 1,226 applicants are receiving an offer for the first time.
Round one offers were issued by the CAO on August 27th. Close to 40,000 applicants accepted their level 8 offers in that round one by last Tuesday. Less than 4,500 did so at levels 6/7.
Of the recipients of level 8 offers in round two, 1,050 (44 per cent) received an offer of their first preference course. For level 7/6 offer recipients, a total of 788 (78 per cent) applicants’ first preference offers were received.
Applicants receiving an offer in this round will have until Wednesday, September 10th at 3pm to accept their offer.
