FOR the close to 60,000 students who sat the Leaving Certificate in June, the waiting is almost at an end. On Thursday, they will get their results.
The correcting has all been done, the marks have been collated and staff in the Examinations Branch of the Department of Education in Athlone are preparing to get all the results in the post on Wednesday to be delivered to the schools on Thursday morning. An Post has promised to pull out all the stops to ensure that the results are delivered on Thursday.
In Northern Ireland, A Level results are also being issued on the Thursday, so the college entry season starts on the same day for both sets of students.
This is THE big week for school leavers. It represents more than simply getting your results, it is effectively the week in which students finally leave school behind and enter the adult world as they contemplate the options open to them with their results.
The Leaving Cert may have marked the end of school attendance, but the real threshold of the adult world is postponed until the results come out and students face into the difficult world of careers, work and college.
The issuing of the results also marks the opening of the college offers season. From this week until mid September, students and their parents will be dithering and worrying as they juggle with the range of college places open to them, the likelihood of points going down and the intricacies of grants, deposits, fees and college accommodation.
The issuing of the first CAO/CAS college place offers has been speeded up dramatically, so that within four days of getting their results students will also find out whether they have a college place in the first round.
Effectively, there is only a long weekend between the issuing of the Leaving Cert results and the making of the first college place offers. This eliminates much of the tension which existed in the past when a gap of 10 days existed. After a successful pilot run last year, the CAO/CAS has decided toe continue with the earlier timetable for the offers.
LEAVING CERT RESULTS:
The results are posted to the school, not to the homes of individual students, so students must go to their school to receive them. The school gets an individual certificate for each student stating his or her grades in each subject.
Many schools will have arranged for the guidance counsellor to be present to help and advise students on the options which their results provide.
Technology has made a big difference to the whole results procedure to the extent that the Department of Education will provide a computer disk with the detailed statistical breakdown of the results to newspapers for publication on Thursday morning. Students will thus be able to learn straight away what the percentages of As and Bs were in each subject and how their own results fit into the national pattern.
CAO/CAS OFFERS:
The CAO office in Galway gets the Leaving Cert results from the Department of Education on a computer disk. The CAO's computer matches the results with its list of applicants through their names and exam numbers. Extra staff work through the night to get the offers processed by the weekend. They are then posted in Galway to be delivered to applicants on Monday morning or Tuesday next week at the latest.
All applicants will be written to, so if you have applied for a CAO/CAS place, regardless of whether you have been successful, you should get a letter from them by the Tuesday at the latest. This means that students, who are not getting an offer on the first round are not wondering what is happening or if an offer might have gone astray.
However, applicants will not know at what points level this year's offers are being made until Wednesday week. The CAO is withholding the points until then, when they will be published in the newspapers. This does, it appears to this column, put unnecessary extra pressure on students.
Students who do not get their desired course place offered on next Monday or Tuesday have to wait an extra day before finding out what their chances might be in the second or subsequent rounds - without the points it is impossible to work out what the odds might be.
By the Wednesday, students will know exactly where they stand. Those who have a place offer will have 10 days in which to accept it; the second round of offers will be made on September 2nd.
For students expecting an offer it is very important to be around over the next two weeks. Decisions have to be made very quickly and failure to accept an offer by the required date will result in the place being lost. This is not a time for taking risks.
ADVANCE PLANNING:
There is a lot of useful reflection and planning which the sensible Leaving Cert student can do between now and offers day next week. Points Race regularly encounters students who have not given a thought to the CAO all summer and cannot, in some cases, even remember accurately in which order they listed their course choices.
First of all dig out your copy of your CAO/CAS application form and refresh your memory on what you have applied for and in which order. Check the card which the CAO sent back confirming all your details.
Is it correct? Have you got your CAO reference number to hand? Check that you have put the right address for correspondence on the CAO form - or have you moved in the meantime? If necessary, send a change of address to the CAO immediately with your CAO reference number. (It's too late to do a change of mind on your course choices.)
It, is a good time also to start sorting out grants and finance and thinking about accommodation for those colleges where you think you are likely to get an offer. Once the offers come out, there is a huge rush on accommodation, so it can be useful to suss it out in advance.