College Choice:Every weekday, until the deadline at the end of teh month, careers expert Brian Mooneywill guide you through the CAO process and outline the best possible options
Having explored the range of disciplines available through the CAO application process, you may now have narrowed down your options to a single area of study or to a small number of them.
You may have settled for a range of courses in the areas of arts/social science, administration/business or engineering/technology.
When you have identified the geographic range of your interests and the list of colleges that you are open to attending, you will through the Qualifax website at www.qualifax.iebe able to identify the full list of relevant courses on offer.
The courses on offer to you will fall within three bands.
They are levels 6, 7 and 8, with two-year higher certificates offered at level 6, three-year ordinary degrees been offered at level 7, and three- to five-year honours bachelor degrees been offered at level 8, the duration of the honours bachelors degree having been determined by the programme on offer.
Arts degrees tend to be offered over three years. International degrees with an Erasmus year in a foreign university are offered over four years, with medical and paramedical degrees taking at least a year longer.
The Central Applications Office system offers applicants the opportunity to apply for their chosen discipline across all three levels.
I strongly encourage all applicants to use the full range of options offered to ensure that you give yourself the widest range of choice when the CAO makes its offers to applicants in August.
A list of courses available at levels 6, 7 and 8 was printed in the recent College 2008 supplement, published on Monday, January 7th, but only a small proportion of the level 6 and 7 courses were detailed.
To ensure that you have comprehensive information on the total range of courses available to you before you list them in your final CAO application, which must be submitted by the closing date for change of mind, July 1st, 2008, you can take the following steps:
• Consult the CAO handbook, alongside the list of course changes which have occurred since the handbook was published last summer, details of which are available on www.cao.ie
• Enter your areas of interest into the search field on the Qualifax website, which will give you an up-to-date list of every course on offer.
• Lastly, to assist you in finalising your choices once you have completed your examinations in June, we will be publishing a change-of-mind supplement in mid-June next with a comprehensive list of all courses on offer by colleges on that date.
There are more than 12,000 places to be secured at levels 6 and 7 programmes, with 75 per cent of these courses requiring under 250 points.
These places enable students who secure modest points in the Leaving Certificate, or through a Fetac level 5 award, having completed a one- or two-year Post Leaving Certificate course in their local VEC, to undertake a course which can lead them to securing the same qualification at level 8 as their peers who secured the high points required to enter directly on to the level 8 programmes.
It will take them a year longer to achieve the level 8 qualification.
A quarter of these programmes offered through institutes of technology and a small number of independent colleges, such as the National College of Ireland, which offers business degrees with accounting and human resource management qualifications, require more than 250 points, with some requiring more than 400 points.
Architectural technology programmes in Cork, Dublin, Galway-Mayo, Carlow and Waterford ITs require from 425 to 270 points.
Business programmes are also very popular right across the IT sector, with level 6 programmes in the DIT (DT324) and Tralee (TL210) requiring 345 and 390 points respectively.
Engineering programmes offered are also very popular as they allow ordinary level maths students to progress on to level 8 qualifications as professional engineers. Science and applied science programmes also attract great interest.
Applicants who are interested in becoming physiotherapists but who expect to fall short of the high points required for level 8 programmes, can progress directly on to the final years of physiotherapy degrees on offer in the UK, having completed physiology and health science at IT Carlow (CW106) or health and physiology at IT Sligo (SG 435) which required 405 and 340 points respectively in 2007.
Tomorrow: Post Leaving Cert courses
ADVICE PODCAST
Listen or download the podcast for advice on how to
complete the application form, and for an overview of the current
CAO process, at
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