Almost 47,000 applicants offered a college place

ALMOST 47,000 applicants have been offered a college place this morning, with about 20,500 of them receiving an offer of one each from their Level 8 and Level 7/6 course lists. For just under half of the 34,009 people receiving an offer of a place on a Level 8 (honours bachelors degree), it is their first choice course, while almost 10,500 are being offered their second or third choice degree.

Almost 20,000 people who applied for a college place through the Central Applications Office (CAO) have not yet received an offer, leaving 3,700 applicants more than this time last year disappointed. They must now wait for Round 2 offers from the CAO on Friday week, August 28 or subsequent rounds through to mid-October, for a chance to register on one of the programmes for which they are seeking entry.

The sharp rise in numbers left without an offer to date is largely due to an increase of almost 5,000 people seeking places this year, up to a record 73,982. Almost 3,000 more people applied this year as mature students aged 23 or over.

Before today, the CAO had already made offers to 8,717 people and almost 6,500 places had been filled, mostly by applicants for courses with reserved vacancies for mature students or others who were not competing directly with school leavers for entry.

Teachers' Union of Ireland president Don Ryan advised students not to be too disappointed if they have not been offered a course this morning.

"They may yet be offered their chosen course in the later rounds of offers and they should bear in mind that hundreds of courses in the further education sector, including Post Leaving Certificate (PLC) courses, facilitate the first steps of a different access route to higher education and their chosen careers," he said.

Almost 14,800 people applied with further education qualifications this year, up from 12,000 in 2008, as third-level colleges are giving greater recognition to such courses for satisfying their entry criteria.

Dozens of higher education courses are expected to be opened up for applications on the CAO website from midday tomorrow, with existing and first-time applicants entitled to seek entry. These are mainly programmes for which colleges have been unable to find enough suitably qualified entrants, or on which there is expected to be a low take-up of offers.

For students planning to accept an offer today, the CAO expects its website to be extremely busy.

On the corresponding day last year, more than 19,000 acceptances were made online, and more than 90% of people taking up a college offer did so on the internet rather than by post.

* The cut-off points for more than 800 Level 8 and 400-plus Level 7/6 CAO courses are in the 16-page Choices for College supplement with today's Irish Examiner.