College students hoping for a CAO offer for the most in-demand courses could be faced with disappointment this week.
It's understood that colleges expect to a see a rise in random selection for a number of in-demand courses, when CAO offers are published this Tuesday.
Applicants for medicine, dentistry, law or science may face a random selection process and high achieving students have been warned that there's no guarantee they'll get the courses they've the points for.
This year saw Leaving Cert results reach record breaking highs across all subjects and, as a result, the CAO may need to apply more random selection than usual.
Roisin O'Donoghue, vice President of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors explains how random selection is applied:
"The issue of random selection arises if there are for example five remaining places on a course but 10 hopefuls in the queue with the same point scores.
"So in that case the five remaining places will be allocated by random selection.
"There may very well be a rise in it this year because of the extra demand for some of the higher points courses."
O'Donoghue says although we may see more of it this year, random selection "is a reality every year".
