Surname: You really should know your surname by now. Make sure that the version of your surname that appears on the CAO form is the same as on your Leaving Cert form. If you use the Irish version on one, don't use the English version on another.
Other Names: The same thing applies here. If you use the full version of your name - first and middle name - on the Leaving Cert form use the same full version on the CAO form.
Sex: This does not refer to frequency, opinions or the facts of life. Sex refers to gender. The CAO, strange to say, does encounter applicants named, for example, Patrick Aloysius Griffin Murphy, who insist on ticking the box marked "female". This is incorrect. If you are a man, tick the box marked male". If you are a woman, tick the box marked "female". No matter how confused you may be about your sexual identity, this is not the place to dispute it.
Date Of Birth: This refers to the year you were born, not the year you are living in. One common mistake is to put down "1997" in this section. Third-level colleges don't take one-year-olds no matter how many points they get in their Leaving Cert.
Home Address: This is where your family lives and probably where you live too. A boarding school is not a home, no matter how nice it is. Put down your home address in this section.
Country Of Birth: For most applicants, this will be Ireland but if you were born outside the country make sure to include it in this section. It may be important, especially for exemptions to NUI colleges.
Nationality: Again, this will usually be Irish, although all EU residents are entitled to be considered on an equal basis.
Address For Correspondence: If you want the CAO to send letters to your boarding school while you are studying, then enter its address here and inform the CAO of your change of address when you return home. The address you give them in the end should be where you, or someone relevant, will be when the offers come out.
Leaving Cert: Don't forget to put down the fact that you are doing your Leaving Cert. Each year hundreds of applicants simply fail to inform the CAO that they are sitting the exam.
Similarly, do not fail to indicate if you are repeating your Leaving Cert. This is a serious matter. Example: if you do well in Irish and then decide to repeat a number of subjects the following year, but exclude Irish and don't indicate on the form that you have already passed Irish, then you may be deemed ineligible for entry to NUI colleges. Make sure you include your exam number for previous Leaving Certs.
NUI Matric: The matriculation is now abolished but if you sat it in previous years then include your exam number here, since matric results will be taken into account if they are better than Leaving Cert results.
Course Choices: This is perhaps the most serious area of all in which to make a mistake, because nobody in the CAO can spot it or help you with it if you do. In fact, your first indication that you made a mistake may arise on the morning you get your CAO offer.
Courses should be listed in order of preference, not in order of points. This simply cannot be stated too often. "What students will do is put themselves off courses by looking at last year's points," says the CAO spokesman. "Then next year they find that the points for the course of their dreams were less than the previous year and they wind up in a course that they didn't really want.
"This is the critical one, the crucial one. Order of preference is crucially important. You shouldn't go guessing on last year's points. You should go for what you want. There's still a huge safety net there if you don't get the course of your dreams."
Application Fee: The application fee for the CAO/CAS system is £18. That's eighteen pounds - or 1,800 pennies. The fee must be included with the application form. Once again, if the form has to be sent back because the fee isn't with it then it will cost £5 extra to reprocess it and it will delay your application.