CAO Round 2, 2026: What the Numbers Are Actually Telling Us

Right, so Round 2 landed this morning, and I've already had three versions of the same panicked message before I'd even finished my coffee. "I got an offer, does that mean my Round 1 offer is gone?" "I didn't get anything, is that it, is it over?" And the one I brace for every single year, usually said in a slightly accusing tone: "Why did the points go down? Did the course get easier?"

No. It did not get easier. Nothing got easier. Let me just talk you through what actually happened today, because I think if people understood the mechanics of this a bit better, results week would involve a lot less crying in my office.

The actual numbers, because I think you should just see them

CAO put out 3,428 Round 2 offers to 3,197 applicants this morning. 2,507 of those were Level 8, 921 were Level 7/6, and 1,270 of those students are getting an offer for the very first time — which, if that's you, congratulations, genuinely. Of the Level 8 crowd, 43% got their actual first preference. For Level 7/6, it was 80%, which I think is a stat that doesn't get talked about enough. I'm pulling all of this straight from CourseCompass's CAO points 2026 vs 2025 page, which they updated this morning, and it lines up exactly with The Journal's Round 2 write-up too, so I'm confident it's solid.

Here's the bit people skip past: if you already had a Round 1 offer and nothing new came in today, you're grand. Nothing has changed. Your Round 1 offer still stands, untouched. Round 2 only overwrites what you're holding if you get offered something you'd actually prefer.

And the deadline — write this down, put it in your phone, tell your mother — 3pm, Wednesday the 9th, for anything you got today. That is not a deadline that moves. Do not leave it.

Why some points actually fell, and why that's not a red flag

Okay, so the thing that sets off alarm bells every year: points going down between Round 1 and Round 2. Of the 316 courses that show up on the Round 2 charts, 184 came down from their Round 1 score. 95 held exactly where they were. 10 reopened to fresh competition. The average drop was 16.7 points, the median was 9, and the single biggest fall was 111 points.

I want to be really clear about what that is and isn't. It is not the college deciding the course wasn't good enough for its original standard. It's not a re-mark. It's simply this: some of the people who were in the running dropped out of the queue, either because they accepted their Round 1 offer somewhere else, or because they didn't reply in time and lost their spot. Fewer people left competing for the seat means the points needed to be the last one in the door drops. That's genuinely all it is.

So if you're eyeing a course that fell 20 or 30 points overnight, don't read anything into that beyond exactly what I've just told you.

And this is sitting on top of an already strange year

Because here's the thing — Round 2 isn't happening in a vacuum, it's landing on a Round 1 that was already a bit of a head-scratcher. Across the 1,168 courses you can genuinely compare year on year, 627 rose in points and 451 fell, average change of +5.9, median of +2 — and that's despite Leaving Cert grades actually being down this year (H1s fell to 10.1% of all grades, from 12.1% last year). Why would points go up when grades went down? Because 95,710 people applied this year, 6,402 more than in 2025, and 20,527 of those were repeat or deferred applicants sitting on grades from years that were marked more generously. More people in the queue, same number of seats. That's the whole story, every year, and it's spelled out properly on CourseCompass's points comparison.

There are 61 courses that are brand new to the CAO this year, across 29 institutions, and if you're weighing up two similarly-named courses, it's genuinely worth checking whether one of them moved in a way you wouldn't guess from the outside. Construction and engineering courses jumped hard this year. Computer science kept falling — 72 points at UCC alone. Vet applications are up 82%, and points still fell, which is a strange one. Primary teaching fell everywhere.

What I'm actually saying to students today

If a new offer came in, read it properly before you touch anything, because accepting it swaps out whatever you were holding — there's no undo. If nothing came in, breathe, your existing offer is fine, and there may still be a Round 3. And if you're staring at a course that dropped 30 points and wondering what you're missing, you're not missing anything — you just have fewer people ahead of you now than you did last week.

If you missed the points entirely and you're wondering what else is out there, don't just assume the door is shut — CourseCompass's backdoor routes tool maps out the actual alternative ways in, PLC by PLC, and it's a much better use of an evening than doom-scrolling the CAO forums. And if you just want to check how your own course actually moved rather than trusting whatever you heard in the yard, the points tool will show you the real Round 1 and Round 2 numbers side by side. Five minutes, and you'll actually know instead of guessing.