The Central Applications Office (CAO) handles the administration of applications to faculty and institution undergraduate courses, disseminates course offers to students and registers their admissions. However, certain key procedures must be adhered to ensure your application is handled accurately.
1. Pay attention to deadlines: Adhering to closing dates and hours is crucial; complaints about poor internet connection, device issues, and all the likes are not viable excuses for tardiness. To encourage timely applications, there’s an early-bird discount available on application fees.
2. Submit an application: Students can carry out the submission of application forms via cao.ie/apply and will need to input their personal information and credentials.
3. Be mindful of ‘spam’ emails: Upon completion of the initial procedures, an email will be sent with the CAO application number. This number is highly important and should be safeguarded as it will be needed for correspondence and anytime you need to log in. Emails need to be verified, and the CAO’s email address added to your contacts to prevent any correspondences from being moved to the spam box.
4. Retain course options: When you’re picking courses, remember that “Level 8” courses relate to honour degrees whereas “Level 6/7” courses pertain to ordinary degrees or advanced certificates. You can select up to ten courses for each category, yet when making offers you can only accept courses from one list.
5. Arrange courses according to genuine preference: This is of utmost importance. CAO representative Eileen Keleghan, advised that applicants typically list their courses based on projected scores or competitiveness, but this can result in being offered a course that might not be as desired. “The course of your dreams should be ranked first, followed by your second favourite, and so on. There is no concrete way to predict other variables,” Keleghan elucidates. The CAO permits the acceptance of a higher preference course even after accepting an initial offer, but will not allow the acceptance of a lower preference course once an offer for a higher preference course has been made.
6. Change in decision: The “change of mind” feature proves useful as between the months of May and July it allows for alterations of course lists. For extensive information regarding CAO applications, a CAO guidebook can be found on their website. This information is derived from a video recording made in 2021.