You can tell a lot about a person by the way they open that envelope. The brave ones at Muckross Park secondary school in south Co Dublin ripped it open, scanned the contents and fished out a calculator, knowing within seconds whether their academic future lay in "Oh my God! Law!" or "Oh. Arts, UCD." Roisin Ingle reports.
The less confident slunk out of the school office with their envelope and disappeared back to their parents' car where they read the news in private yesterday morning. Behind tinted windows, no one can see you cry.
Then there was the intricate Leaving Cert shuffle, where the green slip was taken out of the envelope, put back in, taken out again and eventually given to a friend to read. This manoeuvre also involved a lot of hopping, jumping, arm-waving and hysterical laughter.
Or being Alison Breen, from Ballinteer, you simply stuck the results in your trendy denim bag and didn't bother looking at them at all. "I might do it later in the pub," she said nonchalantly. "Whenever the mood takes me."
For most people though, such restraint proved impossible. When the school office finally opened at 9.30 a.m. - the post was late being delivered - one girl ran straight out with her results, into the arms of her mother, hugging her and screaming "I got six As, I got six As!".
A few moments later, she realised she had thought the A for Ard Leibhéil (Higher Level) printed beside each of her subjects meant she got all A grades. Her actual results, which she went off with her mother to examine, turned out to be less spectacular. No one ever said this was going to be easy.
Before the doors had opened, a small group sat on the tarmac outside clutching packets of Marlboro Lights and willing the minutes to pass. There was also some talk of the poor maths results being reported on the news. "Why do you need maths in this day and age anyway when you have calculators?" asked one.
Others spent the time playing down their chances of securing the points for their preferred course.
"There is no way I am going to get enough points for law, so don't even write that down," said Claire McGreal from Cabinteely. "I'm not being pessimistic, just realistic." After getting her results, a whopping 545 points, she whooped for joy and shouted "you can tell everybody now". She spent most of the next hour relaying the news to friends and family on her mobile phone.
Parents were just as nervous as their children. "This is the last one through the Leaving Cert now," said Anne Kavanagh, the mother of Rachel who was pleased with her results. " I don't want to do it again. They go through so much, the pressure is incredible," she said.
Gretchen Smith, from Dundrum, said she might have felt better pacing up and down her kitchen floor, than waiting outside the school to see if daughter Anna got enough points for medicine.
In the event, Anna gave her mother five hundred and eighty five reasons to be glad she was there. "You deserve it so much," said mother to daughter, as the ecstatic medical-student-to-be burst into uncontrollable tears of joy.