 And I won't let you down well hopefully all the students won't feel let down when they see their CAO offers because they're now well as I speak checking them out online available from two o'clock and the deadline is to next Wednesday afternoon to go through them to size them up I mean if you know it's your first choice then obviously great news but you know there might be other considerations as well and if you haven't applied through the CAO but we'd still like to start university in next month well there is of course available places with the CAO but to any or to tell us a little bit more I'm joined in studio by the registrar to ATU that is a Billy Bennett Billy thanks for coming in and hopefully shedding the weave of the light on all of this how are you no problem good afternoon and good afternoon all the listeners yeah great great day for most people microphone in a bit there there or if you just move around a wee bit the microphone is not going to come to you you come to the microphone okay there we go perfect now anyhow um so yes um a lot of people will be be checking it out now to see if they got their you know got their first choice yeah absolutely so the offers have just gone live um you know it's been a stressful I'm sure week for a lot of people they've just got their leave and sort of now the next phase is what they're doing next and and most people who've applied to us in ATU will be getting good news and will be getting hopefully a very high preference offer this afternoon what sort of percentage are we chatting about that are likely to get if they if they an ATU top of the list are likely to get it okay so um across our programs in ATU across both the honors degrees in ordinary and higher certs uh 80 plus percent will get their first preference and that really means that ATU has become a university of choice that students right across this region from letter Kenny to letter frack um in the nine campuses across the region in the main are going to be offered a program that is their first choice not a lower down preference so nine campuses from here to Galway here to Galway big region huge region huge region that's sometimes been described as a region roughly the size of Wales uh with two campuses here in Dunny Gaul uh two in Sligo uh one in Mayo and four in Galway right so huge region we've almost 24,000 students and we will plan to take in an additional 5,000 first year students full-time first years through the CAO this year right I've taken them in and getting them a place to stay or two different things there'll be a lot of parents now anxious to move on if you know if the uh their students has got a place then they're going to be you know uh scrambling I'd try to get them a place to stay but anyway that's that is uh that's not what you're here to talk about yeah well accommodation is an issue and I suppose part of the impact of this is that students are increasingly uh looking to stay in the regions rather than necessarily going to Dublin or the bigger cities where accommodation is even more problematic I would appeal to people though who have rooms in the houses um maybe kids are growing up themselves the options of taking a student in on a kind of a digs arrangement is is very attractive um and people can earn the income from that tax free so you know anyone who hasn't thought about it thinking about it still contact the student union and the offices in any of our campuses to look and see what you might be able to offer there yeah it might be a nice wee airnager in the academic year a nice airnur but also maybe a bit of company if somebody you know for extra noise and activity around the house and uh as well as an extra airnur which of course is tax free up to 14 000 euro yeah might just be company is right yeah okay um so uh those that have got their first uh you know their first offer accepted then that that's that's brilliant but what about you know those that maybe are not happy with what they've been offered what you know what you know where available places is an option absolutely so the first round offer is just live there in the last few minutes we're making 11 and a half thousand offers uh across right across this university and they have until tuesday uh of next week except or not 3 p.m to accept if you're happy or reasonably happy i would urge people to accept the offer um if you get an offer in round two which comes the following week that will supersede even your round one acceptance so don't worry that by accepting that's the end of the story you may have a higher preference program that you weren't offering round one that will come to you in round two and if you're offered that that then can take precedence over your round one oh so you get to pick and choose well you as long as if you've already got your first preference then that's it finished because you've got your first preference but if you got your second or third preference today and you have a first preference that places become available on over the next week based on the number of acceptances then that second round offer will take precedence over the first round but you can't change your order of preference if you've got your first preference you've got it speaking of preferences you know the points requirement to atu up a lot up at all up much this year so uh on our on our honors degree programs which is what i think most people will be looking at um we have 12 new programs we've no comparator to make with last year so that's great news as well lots of new programs and offer on almost half and about 40 percent of the programs the points will be the same give or take a few so within a kind of a 10 points plus or minus will be the same as last year on about a third of the programs at level eight the points have gone up and on the other quarter uh the points have gone down so it's down to supply and demand where the additional interest is and where places are constrained and and that will influence the where the points go so the points vary hugely year on year um i think the overall situation is with the increased uh grades from the leave insert the points have been up for the last few years and they'll remain broadly at that level but individual programs will go up and down what areas have you seen more demand in this year okay so i suppose across this university the ones where we've seen the kind of biggest points changes have been around areas like architecture, animation, public health nutrition kind of some of the health related areas and science related i suppose has been where there's been a fair bit of uh of growth in particular um in terms of the the kind of main areas where we've seen offers biggest numbers of offers are in uh areas like business, health sciences, biomedical science, marine biology, um health science, physiology, law, engineering, undenominated common entry science and business so a whole range of of areas kind of account for those maybe top 10 in terms of uh in terms of the offers but i think the areas of kind of science and health sciences have have have done very well for us in terms of our offers this year right now going back to CAO and first preference and second preference and accepting offers and so on available programs uh or available places program explain okay so available places is a facility that will open tomorrow uh so available places opening and that's essentially a new application so a student who either didn't get what they wanted or who didn't even apply can effectively make a brand new application through the facility on the CAO called available places we are going to have 18 programs uh at the two-year or higher cert and three-year ordinary degrees available to students so seven of those will be on the campus in Donegal four in Sligo four in Galway and three in Mayo so we have them right across and right across the disciplines of science engineering business computing design etc so great opportunity if you didn't get your first choice or if you had considered going abroad or doing something else and now decide actually i'd like to go to university after all the available places brilliant opportunity for people and it's it's not a case of sort of picking up scraps you may be surprised at at the the list that's there oh absolutely um the the programs that are there are programs where we've put additional capacity in but those programs will all have routes then on to other programs so you might come in on the ordinary degree or higher cert but there will always be a route on to an honors degree program and write the which route to masters and phd for many of our students okay um just remind us of the the uh departments six departments am i correct in saying in general on offer at atu in terms of the faculties or schools we have 13 faculties right across the university that's over 40 departments so i'm talking about our our campus is right across the board in dunny goll that's three faculties and 10 departments are in operation there so the other one i suppose the people will there'll be a small number of students who got bad news last week around the the mats and the leaving cert and there was a lot of coverage of of the mats paper at the time paper one yeah paper one i know it took a lot of air time here but uh we do have a solution potential solution for students where mats is a requirement on a program they've got decent points in the leaving cert but didn't manage to get over the line but mats we are running an enabling mats program started today but it's not too late uh for people who have not managed to pass mats and who need at a minimum ordinary level mats to get on to a degree program they can contact us there's a face to program started on the letter kenny campus but students from anywhere in the region who want to come into a to you can join the program online it's a two-week intensive mats boot camp and if they pass that mats that's deemed to be the equivalent of ordinary level mats in the leaving cert and therefore they will have been deemed to have met the eligibility requirement and can be offered a place hopefully in round two uh of the ceo so it's a fantastic opportunity and the other option i mean there's two other options if you didn't get the news you're hoping for as you've just gone online there today one is our access program so we also have with the access program which runs face to face and donnie gall will be also aiming to run a shorter version of that in sligo and possibly in mayor gallway later this year we already have over a hundred students signed up for the program and on completion of the access program maybe people who weren't ready to go straight into a full-time degree program can take the access route prepare them for it they do a huge amount of work around communications ict and then subjects in in the disciplines to to really immerse them in the high third level experience about 50 to 60 percent every year of students who take the access program go on and do a full-time program for others maybe they realize that that's not the route and they decide to go into a an into something else interesting maybe in further education or an apprenticeship but they've still got the year of experience and and it's a great experience for people and the other one just to mention john is the new um tertiary education programs so government put out a call to us a few months ago and atu responded and we have nine of these new tertiary ed programs so these are programs where the students do year one in the local etb and then our guaranteed access onto year two of the degree program in atu oh they don't go in at year one they go into year two and that's the new departure so there's always been opportunities for students who've done a level five fet program to go into year one this is a new departure so a student can take on uh business it or engineering here with etb and dunny gall and similarly in the etb's msl meoslaigo litrum and gall fever scum and etbs and it can progress to either a business program uh laboratory science program engineering slash ict or nursing uh within the university now nursing is a little different to the other two in that it's a one year plus the four the others are all one year and then they're straight into year two of the degree and that's a brand new type of program the nto the national tertiary office nto.ie um details of all the programs are there and they're just another really good opportunity for people to try a different route and they're not constrained by the traditional leaving certain points race so it's a really good opportunity for people to look at as well well there's a lot there to digest and uh i'd say for some students our heads you know will be frazzled today and in the coming days trying to decide but uh the good news is that there's an open day friday open day friday in dunny gall and again our marketing team are available right across the university for people who want to look at studying in our castle bar or slagot gallway and dunny gall campuses and the marketing and admission teams are available to take queries uh but absolutely welcome people to the in-person open day which is happening here in the uh in the letter kenny campus on friday yeah 11 to 4 and atu.ie for information on the website as well billy pleasure as always thank you thanks very much around the