Is this Higher Education or Further Education on the CAO form?

sparkthatbled

I completed a Train the Trainer course which resulted in a Level 7 Certificate awarded from NUI Maynooth. The course was not run in the university campus but was instead conducted by a third party in a different venue and run over the course of 5 day long work shops spaced over the period of about 3 or 4 months, the examiner and the award were however from the NUIM (final assessment was not done in the university).

I should submit this qualification in the Higher Education section or in the Further Education section?

Also as I am enclosing photocopies of the original certificate and statement of results would I need them stamped by NUI Maynooth?

WildRosie

Level 7 awards are considered to be higher education. See here.

I don't know if you would need to get your cert stamped by NUIM. When I sumbitted copies of certs to the CAO two years ago, I had them certified by a chartered accountant friend and there was no problem with them being accepted. But you should email the CAO to check, they tend to reply quite quickly during office hours.

sparkthatbled

WildRosie wrote: »

Level 7 awards are considered to be higher education. See here.

I don't know if you would need to get your cert stamped by NUIM. When I sumbitted copies of certs to the CAO two years ago, I had them certified by a chartered accountant friend and there was no problem with them being accepted. But you should email the CAO to check, they tend to reply quite quickly during office hours.

Thanks for the reply!

I was a bit confused as it does say on the CAO form that part of the criteria for Higher Education is attendance of the institute, which I didn't do for this. So I was just trying to make sure that this is the right category for this qualification. I was more inclined to put it into the further education rather than the higher education, as I think that TTT are mostly fetac Level 6 courses, the one I participated in, however, was a Level 7 so I wasn't sure how to place it on the form.

I don't know anyone that would be able to certify them like that so I might have get NUIM to certify them.

I'll be sending a postal amendment to my CAO application as I somehow managed to tick only the mature application box when registering and not the Leaving Cert, Further Education and Higher Education sections so I'll be calling them on Monday morning to double check everything.

WildRosie

If it's easier, you can get a local solicitor to certify them. I had to get docs certified for UCD and they had to be done by a solicitor and it was only €5, might be easier if Maynooth is a bit of a trek for you. I just walked in off the street and they did it. Some Garda stations will do it for free but seems to be hit and miss.

If you're anyway unsure, you're right to ask the CAO for guidance, that's what they're there for and I've found them to be helpful. Would be terrible if a simple mistake held back your application!

sparkthatbled

Thanks for the help! CAO told me to put it under Higher.

Got another question here, I have all the info into my online cao form but there is no final submit button that I can see. Is there anything I need to do and if not, how do they determine if I pay early fees or normal fees?

WildRosie

Hhhhmm, I can't really remember in great detail, and I think there's some sort of a save button but then it'll say your info has been submitted to the CAO and then a yellow message appears at the top telling you to post in your documents. I do have a vague recollection of it not seeming very final, if that makes sense but when you log out and back in again you can see your completed application. I think the discounted rate only applied 'til 20 January though? I think you'd have to have paid and applied by then to get the reduced rate...

paperclip2

As far as I know once you log out of the application it submits your data to CAO. Every time you change the data or add to it before 1st of Feb it updates those changes to the CAO website.

Annasopra

Level 7 HETAC or FETAC?