CollegeRoute is an independent guide to getting into third level education in Ireland. It is built and maintained by one person, and it is not connected to the Central Applications Office, to any college, or to any institution.
Why it exists
The CAO points calculators that rank on the first page of search results mostly do the same thing: you type grades in, a number comes out, and you are none the wiser about how it got there.
Worse, most of them get the higher level maths bonus wrong. They add 25 points to your total. That is not how the bonus works. It is added to your maths result before your best six subjects are chosen, which means it is sometimes worth 25, sometimes worth less, and sometimes worth nothing at all. A calculator that always adds 25 gives some students a number that is too high, at exactly the moment they are deciding what to put on their list.
This site was built to get that right and to show its working. The calculator tells you which six subjects counted, and what the bonus was actually worth to you.
Around it sits a small set of pages on the parts of the system people search for in a panic: the deadlines and their exact times, how the offer rounds work, and the routes into college that are not the points race.
How it is paid for
It is not, currently. There is no advertising, no affiliate arrangement with any college or grind school, no sponsored placement, and nothing is sold.
What it is not
It is not the CAO. Applications, official information and your final points all live at cao.ie, and this site links there rather than trying to stand in for it.
It is not advice about your particular situation. It explains published rules and does the arithmetic. Your guidance counsellor knows you, and this site does not.
Who writes it
CollegeRoute is operated by Onoir Studio Limited, an Irish registered company. You can reach it at hello@onoirstudio.com.
Every figure is checked against a primary source, and the date of that check is shown on the page.
This is not a guidance counsellor speaking. What the site does is read the official documents, do the arithmetic, and link to the source for every claim.
How pages are checked and corrected is set out in the editorial policy. If you find something wrong, get in touch and it gets fixed.