2,000 local leaving certs have until 3 o’clock this (Tuesday) afternoon to make a final decision on their first round CAO offers.
A record number of offers this year were first choice so most won’t be getting a better one.
So if they are accepting it they need to log on to the CAO and officially accept – or defer – it online.
If they don’t want to accept then they don’t have to do anything but wait for the next round.
The South East Technological University (SETU) made a massive 7,000 offers this year in 140 courses across their campuses in Carlow, Waterford and Wexford.
SETU Marketing and Outreach Officer Jess Lawson says accepting is a small but crucial step; “Sometimes what we find the students get really excited, they get their offer and sometimes they forget to accept it on the CAO and then they’re looking for retrospective acceptances and it can kind-of be a little bit more messy, the one thing is if you’re going to accept make sure you’ve gone onto your CAO and have accepted the correct course for you”.
She has this reminder; “If you’re not accepting the offer, you don’t need to do much at the moment just don’t accept it through the CAO but I think the one question we’re getting a lot at the moment is ‘I got my first preference but I’m not going to accept it in the hope that I get my second preference in the later rounds’, I think it’s important for students and parents to realise that if you get an offer of your first preference you can’t be offered in subsequent rounds anything lower on your list”.
“