Top degrees at university continue to be the preserve of male students, with 521 of them having achieved that distinction in the latest Higher Education Authority figures.
While 110 fewer female students reached this level, it should be borne in mind that the number of first-class honours degrees awarded per annum is small - about 7 per cent of all degrees.
However, the recovery by men between school and college is surprising, as there are sometimes only three to four years between the Leaving Cert and final exams at university.
Even more surprising is that males get more top degrees even though there are 5,588 of them in university compared to 6,737 females.
Male students seem to increase their performance greatly during this time, according to Higher Education Authority (HEA) figures, which form part of its annual report, due to be published later this year. It covers degrees awarded in the State's seven universities in 1997/98.
Experts traditionally use the number of top degrees awarded as the primary measurement of how the sexes are performing at third level. So while women are getting to university in larger numbers, they are not taking their share of the top degrees.
So what lies behind the performance of men at university when so many of them fail to shine in school exams? One salient factor is that males tend to do courses where high marks are available.
In engineering there are large numbers of first-class honours degrees awarded, mostly to male students because there are more of them than women engineers. For example, 42 male engineers (almost 20 per cent) were able to obtain a first in UCD from a group of 213 male students.
So one of the central reasons female students lag behind their male counterparts is they are not doing such courses as engineering where first class honours degrees tend to be awarded. Only 54 took engineering at UCD in 1997, compared to 213 men.
According to the figures this trend is repeated in UCC, TCD, NUI Galway and DCU - which offers electronic engineering.
Women are also notably absent from computer-related courses (only 10 females took information technology at Trinity compared to 45 males) and this also knocks their average back.
For example, 13 men were able to get a first-class honours degree in computer applications in DCU, with no women achieving the same result.
The nature of courses such as computers and engineering also means high marks can be scored. Examiners either have to mark an answer right or wrong and have little discretion. In humanities courses, taken in large numbers by women, the examiner has more power over the eventual result.
But even taking into account the dominance of men in engineering and information technology, there is no doubt there is an improvement in men's academic performance between school and university.
The explanations behind the "catch-up" effect are varied. The Union of Students of Ireland has pointed to the large number of male lecturers as the reason females get "marked down" in university exams.
It cited a report by Prof Catherine Belsey, an academic from University College, Cardiff, which showed that female students in its arts faculty were being under-marked before the introduction of anonymous marking.
Between 1977 and 1981, 42 per cent of men in the faculty gained first or upper second-class degrees, while the figure for women was 34 per cent.
Anonymous marking was introduced in 1984. The year after, 47 per cent of women in the arts faculty gained first or upper second-class degrees, compared with 42 per cent of men. However, there is a considerable amount of anonymous marking in Irish universities and the higher figures for male first-class honours degrees still exist.
Other possible explanations are that female performance is lowered in a co-educational environment like a university. Research has supported this trend at school level, where girls in single-sex schools often do better than those who share with boys. It may be a factor in university for those girls who leave their single-sex school and find their performance dropping.
Many psychologists disregard this and simply believe that males mature between 18 and 22 when they are at college and this lifts their results.
Emmet Oliver can be reached at eoliver@irish-times.ie