Congrats! You’ve received your points and are now looking over your CAO offers, but is your offer what’s best for you?
No doubt when you were trying to order your CAO preferences you regularly heard people ask “but what job can you get from that?”.
At seventeen / eighteen it’s hard to know what course you want to do, let alone what job you want. I chose a broad course, which had Lord only knows what career choices once I graduated, but it was something that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Sometimes your top choice isn’t the course for you, or sometimes you miss out on the course you wanted, but there’s always options available to you. I know a girl who chose astrophysics as her first choice, but after a few weeks of the course decided it wasn't for her and is now doing teaching or one of my friends who started an arts course and is now a nurse.
So, what options do you have?
Round One Offers
The big one, with 75,194 offers issued and over 10,000 already accepted! By now you have frantically gone online to check what offers you have received. Don’t rush into accepting them; you can take your time, review the description of the course and make sure it’s what you want. Follow your gut instinct, not just the course with the most points. You have until 5.15pm on the 28th of August to confirm your acceptance via the CAO website.
CAO Available Places
Available places are courses that haven’t filled up all their spaces after both Round One offers and waiting lists. There are courses across both Level 8 and Level 6 / 7. You can see the full list of the available places in a variety of colleges here - there’s even a few from Griffith College! If you’re not happy with your first choice you can apply for a place in of these courses when the applications open tomorrow at noon.
We have a wide selection of full and part-time courses to choose from on our Course Finder.
Other Options
If you’re not happy with your Round One offers and don’t see anything suitable on Available Places, fret not! You can always take a year and do a PLC, a further education course, or just a short course where you can get a feeling for certain subjects.
Take a deep breath, relax and take your time deciding on a course. You have until next Monday to accept your Round One so assess your options and follow your gut. If you would like to get in touch with us about courses or your options, please do! You can email us at [email protected] if you have any questions!