College Choice/Brian Mooney:These past two days saw huge activity on The Irish Timeshelplines as CAO applicants, and in many cases their parents, sought support and clarification regarding the choices facing them.
The helplines are now closed, so I will deal with some of the most frequently asked questions over the past three days since the CAO made its offers last Monday.
1. "My daughter is in Ayia Napa with her friends celebrating her Leaving Certificate results and I cannot contact her. What can I do to check what offer she may have received, and can I accept an offer of a place on her behalf?"
I am amazed at the number of extremely confused parents who contacted The Irish Timeshelp line over the past two days on behalf of a son or daughter, who had gone on a celebratory holiday without specific arrangements with their parents regarding how to respond to the CAO offers.
If you are in this position, please let me give you a few simple pointers to assist you in dealing with this situation.
If the CAO offered your son or daughter a place in the first round of offers last Monday, he or she will have received an offer by post, presumably to your home address, by now.
The offer notice may be for both a level 8 higher degree programme and a level 7 ordinary degree or higher certificate course. Your child has until next Tuesday, August 28th, at 5.15pm to accept.
It is imperative that you should be able to discuss this matter with your child before the weekend to ensure that the correct decision is communicated to the CAO.
As you may know, each applicant has a personal access number to enable them to access their own individual CAO record and offer notice.
It is very probable that unknown to you, your son or daughter may have already logged on to the CAO website from their holiday destination, seen the offer/offers made to them and could have accepted a place online and are now back enjoying their holiday.
Unfortunately, given the number of distressed calls from parents, you may have no way of confirming this.
If by chance, you were now to post back an acceptance of the alternate place to the place your child may have already accepted online, your postal acceptance will supersede the one already received by the CAO and you will have accepted the wrong place on their behalf.
So be very careful about any formal communications you have with the CAO.
2. "I have received an offer of a place from the CAO, but have decided that I now want to study a course lower down my order of preferences of CAO choices. How can I do this?"
You cannot change your order of preference in the current year, other than to introduce a new course that is listed on the Vacant Places list, currently on offer on the CAO website at www.cao.ie, and place it above the course you have been offered in round one.
If this facility does not offer you a solution to your problem, your only option is to defer attending college for this year, and to reapply to the CAO again in January 2008, placing the course you now want at the top of your CAO application list.
You may if you wish apply to and attend a post-Leaving Certificate course over the coming year in an area of interest to you. You could for instance greatly improve your computer skills, which would be of great benefit to you in your research and project work, when you start into a CAO course in 2008.
You will still be entitled to free fees in any CAO programme you select. You might also wish to seek employment for the coming year, which would be of great financial assistance to you when you start your college course next year.
3. "I just missed out on the course I really want by five points. What chance do you think I have of getting my course in a later round or is there anything else I can do?"
The CAO will make a second round of offers to candidates on Friday, August 31st, following the closing of first-round offers on August 28th.
Any places not taken up in round one will be re-offered at that time. If the course for which you were short five points falls into that category, you may be offered a place in round two at that time.
The Irish Times will publish a special supplement on August 31st with full details of all such points reductions.
If the round two offers do not bring you satisfaction, you still have one more option to consider. You could submit a request by September 5th to the State Examinations Commission, to have one or more of your papers remarked in the hope that you will be upgraded in one or more papers.
More than 20 per cent of such remarked scripts were upgraded in 2006, so your chances are not negligible.
The number of courses offered on the Vacant Places list on the CAO website has greatly increased over the past 24 hours.
Why is this? Because colleges are now releasing back into the system any places that they failed to find an applicant to offer a place to in the first round of CAO offers.
This process will continue for as long as there are applicants seeking places and colleges trying to fill courses. If you have not as yet received an offer, keep a keen eye on the CAO Vacant Places list and you may be pleasantly surprised.
As the help line is now closed for this year, if you are still unsure concerning the CAO acceptance process, read the CAO handbook carefully or go online to the podcast, provided on www.ireland.com
Tomorrow:Financial supports