Anxieties, tears and fears all flooded the College 2000 helpline yesterday. For instance, there was the student in the Blackrock area whose offer got lost in the post.
The offer was listed on the CAO website but she couldn't access that. This is the first year the CAO has offered this facility, but it was oversubscribed. When College 2000 logged on in mid-afternoon there had been 9,619 "hits" since Monday.
That story had a happy ending. The applicant got her place in arts in UCD and the CAO is sending out a duplicate offer.
If you didn't get an offer or you don't want the offer you got, you should try to access the CAO website. The CAO will put an updated listing of vacant places on the website each day until mid-October, so heavy traffic will probably continue.
The helpline also had calls from some confused applicants. They had got TR001 (two-subject moderatorship) offers from TCD, but the CAO offer notice did not include the specific subject option code. Instead, after TR001 it gave a number from 1 to 10. These numbers corresponded to the applicants' order of preference on their original application form.
That meant students needed to look back through their listing - if they still had it - to identify the relevant offer. Any worried TR001 applicants can check their offer on the CAO website (www.cao.ie) as individual offers are listed correctly there with the subject option code. Of course, it may take some time to log on, and not everyone has a computer.
And then there were the callers who had repeated the Leaving Certificate. They had passed the essential course subjects last year and concentrated on getting points this year. All went well and they got the points - but they didn't get an offer today. The reason? They had forgotten to notify the CAO, on their application form, that they had also sat the Leaving Cert last year.
It is still possible to amend the record now, although the round-one offers have been made and places may be filled on more popular courses.
Another applicant wondered why no cut-off points were listed for clinical speech and language studies (TR007). This is because offers are made in round two. TCD's admissions officer rang College 2000 to say that applicants with 480 points or more will be called for interview.
Meanwhile, more than 43,000 of you around the State hold offers of certificate or diploma courses in third-level colleges. Some of you will also have been offered a degree place.
If the pattern of the past few years is repeated, many of you have already crumpled the certificate/diploma offer notice and thrown it in the bin as unworthy of your attention. By the end of the 1999 college-offers season, 51,898 offers of certificate/diploma places were made to 48,172 applicants - and only 16,663 net acceptances were recorded by the CAO.
If you received a certificate/ diploma offer in yesterday's post and flung it in the bin, you might consider retrieving it. After all, you listed that course on your CAO form. You could list 10 certificate/diplomas as well as 10 degrees. Presumably, you researched your choices.
Try to remember why you listed it. If you simply don't know, you still have time to a do a little research. Find out what the course entails and where it can lead. The most basic research could be getting a copy of the college prospectus and reading about the subjects offered, the amount of practical work involved, the progression prospects and where past graduates have gone.
If you check the CAO handbook you will find that many certificate and diploma courses have +DP and +DG in the columns beside them. +DP means an add-on diploma is on offer, while +DG means an add-on degree is available. The college prospectus should have more details.
The usual structure is for students to do a two-year certificate, followed by a one-year diploma, followed by a two-year add-on degree. Or you may begin your studies with a three-year ab-initio diploma and then progress to a degree. Some add-on degrees are just one rather than two years.
You must achieve certain grades in your exams, usually a merit or distinction, to progress up the "ladder of opportunity". Alternatively, if you pass your certificate, it may be possible to gain a year's relevant work experience and return to college later. (This does not apply to going from diploma to degree.)
Eligible students are entitled to free fees and maintenance grants as they progress towards a degree, whether this takes four or five years. There are now more than 100 add-on options available, spanning areas as diverse as tourism and hospitality management, software engineering, industrial environmental science, journalism and media communication, and health, fitness and leisure studies.
You may find that the certificate or diploma offer you are holding will take you through to the very degree you wanted. Of course, certificates and diplomas are valid qualifications in their own right and the qualification may give you the entree to the career of your choice.
If your worries are not subject or career related, and you're simply worried about admitting to your friends that you're going to an institute of technology rather than a university, remember: it's your life, not theirs. And, who knows, next year you may have a whole new set of friends, some of them also students in an IT.
On the other hand, if you're holding an offer you don't want but think you may as well take it rather than repeat the Leaving Cert or explore other options, the drop-out rates should give you pause. The latest figures show that two out of every five students who enrol on courses in the ITs drop out before they have finished their studies.
Each January the Irish Times helpline buzzes with calls from distraught first-year students who want to drop out and reapply, through the CAO, for something else. So do that research and make sure the course interests you.
If you have an offer of a place on an engineering certificate or diploma you should be especially careful. One engineering lecturer warns that students who have a D3 in ordinary-level maths may find the maths in such courses very difficult.
The CAO informs us that the cut-off points for LM062 in UL should have read AQA (all qualified applicants were offered a place) rather than 270. The cutoff for AH001 in All Hallows was also AQA.
The National College of Ireland is operating a helpline at (01) 406 0595 until Thursday, August 24th, from 9.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. This number was incorrect in an advertisement in yesterday's Options 2000 supplement.