The CAO posts out the second round of offers today. Last year, more than 4,500 offers were made in the second round, with 800 of these going to applicants who didn't get an offer in round one.
There was relatively little change in the points levels, particularly in the high-points courses. It remains to be seen what will happen this year.
Tomorrow, a special supplement with The Irish Times will include a list of the second-round cut-off points, an analysis of the offers, and advice and information on alternatives outside the CAO.
The second round of offers is essentially the end of the CAO process for most applicants. Any remaining places will be offered to eligible applicants on an individual basis.
The largest cause of confusion during this year's college offers season was the £30 deposit. "To send or not to send?" was the question that kept recurring on the College 2000 helpline.
The universities and the Dublin Institute of Technology had asked the CAO to record an acceptance of a college place only if applicants had paid a £30 deposit. This was to be sent in the form of a bank draft or postal order.
Then, the CAO made a statement saying that the £30 was no longer required. Confusion reigned. Mothers anxious to do the right thing insisted on sending the money, just in case.
If you did send in the £30, it will be processed by the CAO and deducted from any fees due to the college. If you didn't, that's fine too.
It makes sense that all colleges should adopt the same acceptance procedure. If you don't need to send a deposit to accept a place in Waterford IT, why should you have to send one to accept a place in DIT? Hopefully, next year, there will be no money involved in the CAO acceptance process and this will be made clear to applicants from the start of the offers season.
Our telephone helpline counsellors were very pleased to see the £30 abolished, but they say the timing was a public relations disaster for the CAO. "It was the single most contentious issue on the helpline," says counsellor Mr Vivian Cassells.
On the plus side, this is the first offers season in which the CAO has had a website where applicants could check their offers and search for vacant places. This has attracted large amounts of traffic. When College 2000 logged on, on Friday last, we were visitor number 22,834.
Still with the CAO, Mr Cassells notes that there is "no shortage of courses being declared as non-runners this year. We are no further on about devising a system to deal with courses that are not included in the CAO handbook, due to late approval, or courses that are abandoned after July 1st".
The Department of Education, Science and Technology has worked very hard to make the examination system more transparent, but some glitches still remain.
Guidance counsellor Ms Sile Sheehy wonders why the forms for requesting rechecks are not sent to the schools on the same day as the Leaving Certificate results. Each year, parents and students ring the helpline saying they went to schools to organise rechecks, only to be told the forms weren't available yet.
Mr Cassells says: "The examination section of the Department of Education and Science rarely gets the plaudits they deserve for the manner in which they conduct the exam process. It is important that new and welcome initiatives such as the viewing of scripts should be thought through when the regulations are announced."
At present, the superintendent, who is appointed by the department, can use his or her discretion to make decisions about the number of teachers a student may bring along to view the scripts. The exam candidate can only have one other nominated person in the viewing session with him, but some superintendents will allow a series of teachers in, sequentially.
The use of equipment such as cameras, laptops, dictaphones and calculators may also be allowed by the superintendent. A spokesman for the Department of Education says that a library-like atmosphere should be maintained and that it is up to the superintendent to decide how this should be done. This statement leaves quite a lot of room for interpretation.
Surely it would make more sense to come up with a few unambiguous rules so that everyone is treated equally?
A Cork-based guidance counsellor wonders why, in this era of computers, the Department of Education can't calculate students' points for CAO purposes, and issue the figures along with Leaving Certificate results.
There would be some problems with this, as there are exceptions to the common points rating. For example, UL gives bonus points for higher-level maths for all courses (other colleges discontinued this when the curriculum changed), while DIT gives an additional weighting for maths and some science subjects for its electronics/electrical engineering degree. Different institutions also assign different points ratings to the Leaving Certificate vocational modules.
The Commission on the Points System, which published its final report and recommendation in November last year, suggests some tweaking when it comes to translating Leaving Certificate grades into points. For instance, it recommends that the number of points for an A1 be 95, rather than the current 100. Points should not be awarded for E grades, according to the commission, and all ordinary-level grades (other than A1) should be increased by five points. The commission also recommends that the universities consider giving higher points to the link modules as soon as possible.
The helpline had a number of queries from speech therapy applicants, worried that they had not received a round one offer. Offers to these applicants are made in round two only because the top 60 (480 points or higher this year) are called to interview to be assessed for any speech defects. This is done in conversation and by reading a short passage.
Next year, Ms Sheehy says, TCD should consider doing these interviews immediately after the Leaving Certificate results are issued and before first-round offers.
The College 2000 column on Wednesday will include a full list of courses with vacant places, available through the CAO. The CAO website (www.cao.ie) can also be checked for vacancies. For those interested in applying for a college place in the UK, the UCAS website can be found at www.ucas.com
In last Friday's column, Dun Laoghaire Senior College was incorrectly called Dun Laoghaire College of Further Education. There are a small number of vacancies on most of the courses at the college, which offers a wide variety of further education courses (tel: (01) 280-0385; e-mail info@scd.ie; college website: www.scd.ie).