Almost 73,000 made applications to CAO by February 1 this year - and if you haven’t done so and want to apply there is still time. Late Applications closed on May 1 at 5.15pm. Tomorrow (May 5) at 12pm the CAO Change of Mind facility will open to allow students to make changes to course choices. This can be done up to July 1 at 5.15pm. You can make changes on both lists – Level 8 and Level 7/6.

The two lists are completely separate in your application. You can take out, add in or change the order of the courses. Some restrictions do apply, for example it is not permitted to add in any ‘Restricted’ courses at this stage. If you do not wish to change your courses you don’t need to do anything, the original course choices will remain unchanged. There is no charge for the Change of Mind facility and if you make a change online, an acknowledgement is sent to the email address used at the application stage. You can also log on to www.cao.ie/myapplication to check it at any time. A video guide to the Change of Mind can be found on www.cao.ie.

REVISIT YOUR CHOICES

Lots of you were under pressure and unsure of choices ahead of the February 1 deadline so it is really important to revisit your CAO choices at this stage and well in advance of July 1 deadline, after which no changes can be made. Any changes you make at this stage cancel and supersede all previous course choices and whatever choices and/or changes you have made by July 1 are final. Whatever courses you have included at that stage, in whatever order you have listed them, is what CAO will work with when they get access to your Leaving Cert results, usually in mid-August.

It is important to take note of the following:

* Always place your courses in order of preference – not in the order of the points. Remember you will not know the points for 2021 until the day that the first round offers are issued, usually shortly after the Leaving Cert results come out.

* Check the Alert Lists for the various colleges on www.cao.ie to check if any new courses are now available that might interest you. Such courses may not have been included in the CAO booklet at the beginning of the school year.

* Fill up all 20 choices if possible (10 Level 8 and 10 Level 7/6) as this gives you the best option of getting a course somewhere, even if it is not in your top choices.

* Research all courses that you put on the CAO thoroughly; entry requirements, course content, work placement, career options etc.

* Check your emails as you will receive confirmation of your new course choices.

If there are any errors or omissions contact the CAO office immediately as it will be too late to do anything about them at a later stage.

Remember, CAO is not the only option. There are hundreds of excellent courses in colleges of Further Education which allow you to progress through the CAO system onto Higher Education once completed.

Check out www.fetchcourses.ie, and at a local level check out www.kerrycollege.ie and www.kerryetb.ie. Apprenticeship options are also expanding all the time, check out www.apprenticeship.ie.