CAO Change of Mind Is Now Open – Here’s What You Need To Know
CAO Change of Mind is now open!
This period of time usually brings in a few jitters, but after the huge upset with the Leaving Cert being cancelled this year due to COVID-19 there is going to be an increased worry about all things CAO.
Here’s everything you need to know about the CAO, how to change your course preference if you want to and some personal advice from Team Missy…
Statement of Application Record
The first thing that you need to keep an eye on over the next few weeks is to ensure that you receive your Statement of Application Record from the CAO.
Before the end of May, you will be sent a Statement of Application Record as a final acknowledgement and to enable you to verify that all information has been recorded completely and correctly. You should check the following:
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Are all of your course choices shown and in the correct order?
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Are all of the course codes correct?
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Are the examination numbers correct?
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Are all examinations and exemptions mentioned?
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Are all personal details correct?
If you have not received the Statement by 1 June you must contact CAO immediately. Failure to do so may have very serious consequences, for example, you might not receive an offer.
The Statement of Application Record contains a date stamp to inform you of when the document was printed by CAO. Changes that you make to your application after this date will be reflected in your online CAO account. You can log in to your CAO account via the My Application facility to check that all of your updated information is recorded completely and correctly before the Change of Mind closing date of 1 July at 5:15pm.
Change of Mind
The CAO online Change of Mind facility is now open and closes on 1 July at 5:15pm.
There are some courses that can be no longer added, mainly in medicine and other courses that require other assessments.
You can use the online facility as many times as you like to add, remove or re-order your courses for no extra charge until the 1 July at 5:15pm.
To change course choices, log in to your CAO Account via the My Application facility and click on Change Level 8 Course Choices or Change Level 7/6 Course Choices. You can then use the New Courses list to enter new courses, disregard existing course choices, or re-order your existing course selection. You must list all of your courses in your order of preference on the new list. If you change courses online, an acknowledgement will be sent to your email address – please check this email carefully and inform CAO of any errors or omissions. You should also check that your courses have been updated by using the My Application facility before 5:15pm on 1 July.
For more information see the CAO website.
Our Advice About CAO Change of Mind
Look, the Leaving Cert and CAO is a mess this year. We may as well just acknowledge that. It’s unfortunate, stressful, confusing, upsetting and a hundred different things.
Our number one piece of advice is not to make huge changes to your CAO because you think you mightn’t get the points you need for the course you want due to predictive grading. Just like doing the Leaving Cert exam in a normal year, you don’t have a crystal ball so you don’t know the exact number of points that you will get or how the CAO points will work out.
The worst thing that you could do now is to put down a course that you don’t want just because you think the points will be lower for that. Stick to what you have wanted and worked towards. You could very well get the course that you want. If you make a change based on what you think you might get you could end up in a course that you don’t want to be in. And the worst thing ever would be to change it and have it turn out that you would have had enough points. The CAO is just a minefield, we know!
BUT it can also be a good thing to do a bit more research into the course that you want and then see if there’s anything similar out there somewhere else. If there is, or if you do see a course that has a lower number of points required that you still like, then think about putting that further down your list of preferences.
Remember, you should do your CAO out in the order that you would prefer the courses.
There Are Always Other Options
The CAO is a very stressful experience, but just remember there are always ways to get where you want to be even if you have to make a little detour along the way.
We previously put together a guide about other options available to you.
How are you finding the CAO process this year?