Q&A

Your questions answered by Brian Mooney.

My daughter, who is sitting her Leaving Certificate this year, applied to a number of UK colleges through Ucas Apply. At the end of January, one of the colleges she applied to contacted her, looking for her predicted grades, as they did not appear on her application form. The college could not make her a conditional offer without this information.

I contacted her guidance counsellor, who assured me this information had been included in the school's reference, which had been sent to Ucas. She kindly offered to send the information again, this time to the college. It appears my daughter is not the only student affected. What is happening with Ucas Apply? Will my daughter be deprived of a college place because colleges are not receiving vital information from Ucas?

Ucas is the UK organisation, similar to the CAO in the Republic, which processes applications for universities. In the Ucas system, applicants may apply for a maximum of six courses. The application form includes a school reference, containing the predicted grades they expect the applicant to achieve in each Leaving Cert subject.

When Ucas receives an application, they are responsible for forwarding the application form to all the colleges listed. The admission staff within the colleges consider the application. The personal statement written by the student, outlining their reasons for choosing the course, the reference written for the applicant, by a teacher chosen by them, and the student's predicted grades, as outlined by the school are all taken into account. A decision is then made whether to make a "conditional offer" of a place to the applicant.

Unlike our CAO system, students applying through Ucas can get up to six offers, based on their securing the required Leaving Cert grades nominated by each of the universities. The colleges contact the applicants directly, informing them of their decisions. The role of Ucas is to forward the full application details to the colleges.

This year Ucas decided to move, in one year, to an online application system. They did not issue schools with any paper application forms. The completed application records were successfully transferred electronically by the schools to Ucas. The difficulties your daughter is experiencing are due to technical problems in Ucas. These technical difficulties are arising from problems in sending copies of the application records to the colleges listed. Some of the predicted Leaving Cert grades are being "clipped" from the records transmitted, thus denying the colleges access to these predicted grades, and possibly leading the college to disregard an application.

Ucas has been alerted to this problem and is still attempting to resolve these technical difficulties. They have notified all the institutions in the system that applicants' full details are available through a secure part of the Ucas website or by telephoning Ucas directly. It is worth noting that not all Irish applicants seem to be affected. This may have something to do with the computer system in individual colleges.

Where they have become aware of this problem, through a request from a UK college, guidance counsellors have been supporting their students by supplying the necessary information of the predicted Leaving Cert grades to those colleges.

It is not feasible for schools to presume that all records have been "clipped" in the transmission process and contact all institutions involved. One school I contacted, in a border county, which has a large number of Ucas applications to colleges in Northern Ireland, stated that it would have to make up to 720 calls on behalf of its students to rectify what is essentially a Ucas problem.

It would be greatly reassuring if Ucas removed the uncertainty surrounding their new online application process by advising all Irish applicants that the full details supplied will be communicated to the relevant universities. If any student does not receive an anticipated offer from a college, they may wish to contact them directly to check that the full details of their application have been received.

Brian Mooney is president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors. E-mail questions to bmooney@irish- times.ie