With just weeks to go until the Leaving Cert begins, we now enter the business end of the process.

College may seem a far-off prospect in the midst of cramming. But now is the time for students to consider your CAO options and where they will head off to in September.

The CAO’s change-of-mind facility has opened and will remain open until July 1st.

Many students will be happy with their choices, but it is worth having another look at the courses they have put down and ensure that there are back-up options.

Ita McGuigan, senior school liaison officer at Dublin City University, says students still have time after the exams to weigh up and reassess their options.

She says June open days at various colleges are a great way of helping cement decisions – or to strike a choice off.

DCU, McGuigan says, “has a change of mind or June open day which is solely for CAO applicants and provides a one-stop opportunity to come up and look around the campus and speak to experts and lecturers to make sure the course is really for you.”

The leaving certificate year is overwhelming for many students, and the rush to fill in the CAO means they sometimes overlook the fine print and make bad choices.

McGuigan says students need to double-check they meet the entry requirements for their course or risk using up one of their options on the CAO list.

“Take out the prospectuses, talk to your career guidance counsellor and go through the fine print,” she says. “Engineering, for instance, generally requires higher level maths, and if you don’t have higher level or are planning to drop to ordinary, you will not be considered even if you do get the points.”

Students who are now doing your course are also a great source of advice: “Our DCU student ambassadors are one of our main assets because they come in and give campus tours to prospective students,” McGuigan says.

Talk to students

She advises contacting college admissions offices for advice or go to the June open days to meet with students who have done the course.

“Talk to current students of the course you are interested in because they are not trying to sell the course to you and will give you a lowdown on what it is really like,” she says.

“Pick up the phone to the admissions office or the student recruitment team and ask for a campus tour or what the difference is for different courses. Come up and get a feel of campus and don’t be afraid to ask the questions. The June open days that take place are very serious compared with November, because that is make-or-break time for students who may change their mind.”

“I would encourage any student, no matter where they are thinking of studying, to get to an open day in June just to ask the right questions so that you are definitely sure a course or college is for you. It is better to find out in June that it’s not for you rather than to later risk dropping out.”

McGuigan says students should focus on they subjects they really enjoy rather than bending to suit what they think they will be good at.

“It sounds very obvious,” she says, “but if you don’t enjoy English at school, don’t put down journalism. You need higher level English in most cases and that is three or four years of very intense study related to a subject you may neither like nor have any aptitude for. The chances of you succeeding at your course are greater if you like the subject and enjoy it.”

Job edge

Students should look into what courses offer work placements, which can give an edge when looking for a job post-graduation.

“If you have gone through a work placement on your course, that will stand out to potential employers – do your research to see if the course you want offers one,” she says.

According to Richard Murphy, schools liaison officer at Griffith College Dublin, the fact that about half of CAO students use the change-of-mind facility shows it's a good option.

Once the final exam is done, however, he says students should not begin second-guessing points.

“Guidance counsellors are blue in the face telling students: don’t second guess points. We always get people ringing up saying I think I messed up a certain subject and ask does that mean I won’t get in to that course? But we tell them don’t panic. Everyone thinks they did worse than they actually did.”

To ward off post-exam fears, Murphy advises putting down as many courses as possible on the level eight and level seven part of the CAO form – and to always have back-up options.

Form fill

“Most students only fill a third of the form in, but I would advise them to fill in all 20 if they so wish. For example, some courses in Griffith are available at level seven, but also level eight, so there’s the option of doing the ordinary level course if you don’t get the points for the higher one.”

He advises checking the CAO website to see what new courses have come on stream this year.

“Colleges have new courses that were not accredited before the February 1st deadline, so they later give out alert lists to the CAO and push the list on the website. Even if you are pretty happy with choices, it’s a good idea to go online for a gander and see what’s new since you last looked at it.”

Last year 6,000 students applied or registered with the CAO but didn’t actually put a course down.

“People think the February 1st deadline means you have to have your course chosen,” Murphy says, “but it’s not true. You can put your details in by the first of February, and that gives you another four months to make up your mind. The students who didn’t fill it in can now go on to the change of mind and fill it in because it has bought them time.”

He adds that the July 1st deadline isn’t the absolute deadline for students who are still procrastinating: “The July 1st deadline isn’t the ‘drop dead’ deadline because from about early August the CAO will reopen for available places.

“There is no specific date, but the colleges know a few weeks in advance of the Leaving Cert results of the offers being made or how many places are going to be taken up. So if we know more places are going to be vacant on a course, we can re-advertise the places a few weeks in advance.

“The available places list on the CAO stays open for four or five weeks until the beginning of October,” Murphy says. “So any places that are not filled by colleges in August – students can go on the CAO site and apply if they have the requirements.”