It may be unsporting, uncharitable, not to mention petty, but many students enjoy comparing their results with each other and trading insults about who is the biggest swot.
Yesterday the CAO released a set of figures which allows these unsporting comparisons to be made on an even broader basis. The organisation's number-crunchers have looked at what kind of courses this year's high achievers (those with six A1s or more) have decided to apply for.
There are 94 of these students in the CAO process and surprise, surprise, almost 50 applied for a healthcare course such as medicine, dentistry and pharmacy.
Contrary to the national picture, though, 20 of them applied to do some type of science course, while 10 decided to go down the engineering route.
The remainder opted for either a law, arts or business course. Only five applied for a business course, compared to six for an arts course and nine for a law course.
Who would have thought that business courses would attract fewer high-fliers than arts courses? Usually points are higher, particularly in universities, for business courses compared with arts courses so business students like to tease arts students about this, especially during freshers' week.
This is simply because there are fewer places on business courses than arts courses. These figures underline once again what guidance counsellors have been telling students for years - the amount of points needed for a course is no indication of its quality or the quality of its students.Hopefully students will bear this in mind next week when offers come through their letter box.
The euphoria of getting good results, intense and satisfying at it is, only lasts so long. Already students are beginning to tease out the precise implications of their results and playing that peculiar mid-August parlour game, guess the points.
One of the more curious facets of the exam season is that students have to endure a gap of almost a week between getting their results and the issuing of CAO offers on Tuesday.
Long wait
Yesterday the director of Bruce College Cork, Mr Micheál Hogan, described this as "disgraceful".
"Many students and parents have commented to me over the years that this wait is more agonising than anything they encountered during the actual Leaving Certificate. There is a lot of talk about the stress that students are under these days and what should be done about it. There is a very simple solution to this problem - both Leaving Cert results and first-round CAO offers should be issued on the same day," he said.
A CAO spokesman told The Irish Times this would not be fair to the almost 10,000 students who have no intention of going to college. Why should their day be overshadowed by everyone else discussing what college offer they had received, he asked.
The second reason the results and offers cannot be released together was a practical one, he said. The CAO liked to have several dry runs of its system to ensure there were no technological gremlins present. If the results and offers were released simultaneously, the chance of major errors would be high, he added.
What to do on Tuesday
Either way this Tuesday is the big day. On that day you should get an offer notice from the CAO in the morning post. Depending on what courses you put down, it is possible you will receive two offers - one from the degree list and one from the certificate/ diploma list.
You don't have to wait for the postman. The CAO's website, www.cao.ie is open for business from 6 a.m. You can view and accept your offers at this address and have everything done before the rest of the family come down for breakfast.
This is not really the best way to proceed. You should sit down with your parents and coolly consider what you have been offered. Do not reject the offers immediately, even if you are not happy with them. Something which looks initially off-putting could be a great opportunity if you just think it through.
Unfortunately you cannot delay for long because that CAO form has to be returned by August 28th at 5.15p.m. You may have received two offers, but you must only return one. Make sure you send the offer you actually want. Examine it closely beforehand and get a certificate of posting.
The online system can cause confusion within families, though.
A son or daughter, most likely abroad, may accept a certain offer online, while his or her poor parents are posting another one to CAO headquarters in Galway. The CAO has a simply solution - it accepts the latest offer it receives. So make sure all family members operate in a co-ordinated fashion. However because the CAO accepts the last offer, at least those of you of a nervous disposition can chop and change up until August 28th. Once that date comes though, the shutters come down and there is no flexibility.
Use the complete interactive guide to this year's Leaving Cert results and CAO places on skoool.ie
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