Everything you need to know about CAO offers

CAO offers come out after the Leaving Cert results have been released. Once you have calculated your points, you will need to wait for your CAO offers. Based on your points, you will be offered a place on one of the courses you have put down on your CAO. It will then be up to you whether you want to accept it or turn it down. If you’re not sure about college, know that you have plenty of other options after finishing school.

Getting a CAO offer

Remember that if you are unsure about your first choice, you don’t have to accept it straight away. You have a few days to think about it before making the decision.

2024 CAO dates

You can find a list of key CAO dates here.

Round One offers

Round One offers will be available online through the ‘My Application’ portal on the CAO website, and will be sent out via email and text message. Applicants who have not received an offer will get a “Statement of Application” email. 

If you don’t get your first choice, try to remember that this is not the end of the world. Find out what you can do if you don’t get your first choice on the CAO.

Round Two offers

CAO Round Two offers will be available after the reply deadline for Round One offers. These offers will be issued through the ‘My Application’ facility on the CAO website.

If you missed out on your choice of course in Round One, you may now be offered a place on your preferred course or a higher preference course if a place becomes available, even if you have accepted an earlier offer. You will not be offered a place on a course that was lower down in your preferences to the course you have already been offered.

If you have accepted an offer in Round One, you don’t have to accept a Round Two offer if you don’t want to. You can simply ignore the offer and stay in the course you accepted in Round One. But if you do accept the new offer, it will automatically cancel the previous acceptance.

What happens after Round Two offers?

After Round Two, offers will be issued as necessary to fill any vacancies, as part of Round Three, Round Four and Round Five offers. 

How do they decide who to offer places to?

For each course to which you have applied, your Leaving Certificate results are checked to see if you meet the minimum entry requirements for the course. Points will be calculated only after it has been determined that the results on your CAO file meet the minimum entry requirements for the course.

To determine who should be offered places in a course, the applicants for that course are placed in order of merit. The applicant with the highest points is placed at the top of the list and the applicant with the lowest points score goes to the bottom of the list.

If a number of applicants have the same points and are tied for places on a particular course, they are given a number and picked at random for the place.

Accepting or rejecting an offer

If you want to accept or reject a CAO offer, there are some things you need to know:

• When you receive an offer, you need to accept it by the Reply Date on your offer email.
  
• If you accept your offer online you will receive an acknowledgement email, and you can check that your acceptance has been recorded at
  www.cao.ie via the My Application facility.
• If you don’t want to accept an offer you’ve received, then simply do nothing as no further action is required.
• For later Rounds 2-5, you will be notified of any new offers through the CAO website as well as by email or text if you’ve opted for those.
• It’s important to pay attention to the Reply Date for each offer Round as you need to confirm your acceptance by this date.

Can I accept more than one offer?

If you receive more than one offer, acceptance automatically cancels any previous acceptances. You can have only one current acceptance in the entire CAO system. This means that whichever course you accepted most recently is the course you have a place on. You have given up your place on another course by accepting the new offer.

Receiving a Level 6/7 offer and a Level 8 offer at the same time

When filling out the CAO, you can choose to fill out two different lists. One list is made up of Level 6/7 courses and the other list is made up of Level 8 courses.

You may receive an offer on both a Level 6/7 course and a Level 8 course at the same time. You can only accept one of these offers. For example, by accepting an offer on a Level 8 course, you cannot accept an offer on a Level 6 course, and vice versa.

Acknowledgement of Acceptances

If you accept your offer by the reply date, you will receive an acknowledgement email, and you can check that your acceptance has been recorded at
www.cao.ie via the My Application facility.

Getting on a course through Available Places

Every year, after the initial CAO offers have gone out, the CAO will post a list of courses that still have places available with no waiting list. If the course you were hoping to get into is listed, or if there is another course in the list that you might be interested in, you can apply online. Visit the CAO website to view the list of available places. Keep checking back to see if there are any new places available on the course you’re interested in. 

You will need to meet the minimum requirements in order to get into the course.

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