Your Child Got a CAO Round One Offer: What to Do Now

The phone buzzes on the kitchen table. Your son or daughter picks it up, reads the screen, and their face does something you cannot quite interpret. A CAO Round One offer has landed. Before anyone says anything, it is worth knowing what that message actually means — and what it does not.

What the offer is actually telling you

A Round One offer means your child has been offered a place on one course. The CAO makes one offer per round, selecting the highest-preference course for which they have met the entry requirements. It is not necessarily the course they wanted most. It is the highest course on their list that they qualified for when offers were calculated.

Before anyone celebrates or worries, check the course code carefully. The CAO offer will show a college code and a course code. Look up what that code actually is on the college's own website or the CAO website. Some courses have very similar names but lead in quite different directions. A code for a general science degree and a code for a specific programme within that faculty can look almost identical at a glance. Read the full course title slowly before you form an opinion.

Also check whether it is the place your child actually wants. Sometimes a Round One offer arrives for a course lower on the list because points for a higher preference were just out of reach. That does not mean the process is finished.

Why the reply deadline matters more than the offer itself

This is the part that catches families out. Missing the reply deadline means the offer lapses. It does not roll over to Round Two automatically. Your child would need to wait for Round Two and hope an offer comes, without the safety net of the one they already had.

The reply window is short — check the exact closing time on the CAO website, cao.ie, because it is counted in hours, not just days. Your child logs into their own CAO account to accept or decline. They can accept the Round One offer to secure it and still remain in the system for Round Two if they want to be considered for a higher preference. Accepting Round One does not lock them in permanently; it protects them while they wait. Declining it outright removes that safety net entirely.

If your child is happy with the offer and it is their first or second preference, they accept and the process is largely done. If they feel the offer is lower than they hoped and they believe a higher preference may come through in a later round, they can still accept the current offer as a fallback. The two things are not mutually exclusive, which is something many families do not realise until they have already made a rushed decision.

How to have the conversation without making it yours

This is harder than reading the course code. You have watched them study, worried quietly for months, perhaps formed your own view about what they should do. An offer landing — good, disappointing, or surprising — can bring all of that to the surface at once.

The most useful thing you can do in the first hour is ask one question and then stop talking: "What do you think about it?" Not "what are you going to do" and not "I always thought that course was solid." Just what do they think. Their answer will tell you what kind of support they actually need — whether that is practical help reading the small print, a quiet space to think, or someone to phone the college with them if they have questions.

Some things worth remembering if the offer is not what they hoped for:

• A PLC course or further education route can lead to the same destination by a different road, and some colleges give reserved places to PLC graduates.
• Apprenticeships in Ireland now cover a far broader range of trades and professions than they did a generation ago.
• Deferring an accepted offer for a year is possible in many colleges, though each institution sets its own policy — your child would need to contact the college directly.

None of these are consolation prizes. They are real options that have worked for a great many people. The Leaving Certificate result is one data point, not a verdict.

The one thing to do right now

Log into the CAO account together, read the offer code carefully against the college's website, and note the exact deadline for the reply. Everything else — the bigger conversations about what comes next, the what-ifs, the comparisons with what other families got — can wait until that deadline is written down somewhere neither of you will miss it. Securing the offer costs nothing and closes no door. Letting it lapse quietly does.

Where to check the official details

Rates, dates and deadlines change every year. These are the sources worth trusting over anything in a group chat.

• CAO — Offers, rounds, deadlines and your child's application record
• Citizens Information — How applying to college works, step by step