Q: I'M in first year in college and I'm having difficulty with my studies. I'm thinking of dropping out. How will this affect my fees next year? What options are available for me in other colleges?

Cork student.

A: YOU did not say which college you are in or which course you are taking so the first thing to do is to check who is paying the fees. Is the course State-funded or ESF-funded? Somewhat different rules apply to each.

If you sit the exam and fail, then you have to pay fees for the repeat year yourself next year except in cases of certified illness. If you drop out without doing the exam, you will still have to pay fees next year.

However, if you are on an ESF-funded course (most of which are in the RTCs) and drop out now, you can keep your free fees for next year as long as you do a substantially different course. This also applies whether you sit the exam and fail or if you pass the exam. However, it must be a substantially different course.

Some universities, among them UCD, will not consider you for a place next year if your first-year exams are not satisfactory. Others, among them TCD, will consider your Leaving Cert results only. Applications for transfer to the first year of a course should normally be made through CAO and you do have to meet the requirements of the particular college.

Before dropping out, you should ask yourself why you are in this situation. If it's purely a time management problem, you will have learned a lot about yourself and how to organise your future study. If it's a problem of subject matter, it would be very important to check with your college tutor or head of department.

It's not unusual for first-years to feel like dropping out just before exams but it would be a shame to leave without checking if you could get some help with your studies. Perhaps the lecturer in the area where you are having difficulty would be able to point you in the right direction or get you some help from a graduate student.

It's possible that you're not as far behind as you think. Perhaps a good revision plan would do the job. You could sit some papers and defer the rest until autumn but do check which and how many papers and practicals you need to clear in the summer exams.

The main thing is to organise yourself now before you convince yourself that your situation is hopeless.

Q: WHY did UCC bring in a five-year programme in medicine without telling the applicants, their parents, the schools or guidance counsellors? Is medicine a five-year or a six-year programme?

Cork guidance counsellor.

A: UCC did not specifically introduce a five-year programme in 1996 - what they did was they gave exemptions to 12 students who had 575 points and above and who had at least HC3 in chemistry and HC3 in biology or physics in the Leaving Cert. This was not flagged in the CAO handbook for 1996 - nor is it in the 1997 handbook.

Surely separate codes should have been included so that students could make a definite choice. If two extra codes had been given, as was recently done for the Royal College of Surgeons for reasons relating to scholarships, then at least a student should be able to choose if he or she wants or can afford a five- or six-year programme.

We have also heard that other colleges are operating this system without informing applicants beforehand. UCC has now informed guidance counsellors that they anticipate again offering some students exemptions in 1997 with a view to phasing in a five-year medical programme but it's still just one CAO code. Perhaps a separate list should be made to cope with this proliferation in medical courses - we are now up to seven in the degree list. A five-year programme will be welcomed by many, especially on cost grounds, but students should at least be informed.

Many British colleges, including all of the London medical schools, offer medicine as a five-year programme only. Because A-Level exams are considered to be one year ahead of Leaving Cert standard and also because only three subjects are studied, Irish students have to apply to colleges with a six-year programme which includes a pre-med year to bring them in line. They also set very definite requirements such as that of higher chemistry being essential and physics, biology and maths being preferred at higher level. But at least the applicants know which course they are applying for.

Q: ARE there any CAO/CAS courses for 1997 which are not in the handbook? What are they?

Dublin applicant

A: AS DAFT as it might seem, there are courses like this around. Guidance counsellors should throw the list in the bin and ignore it at this late stage of the year. Each year, there are more courses than ever late for the publication of the CAO handbook which arrives in schools in September. This is the right time for the handbook to arrive and obviously to meet this deadline colleges must submit courses to CAO some months earlier. Unfortunately the colleges miss the deadline and, unlike the poor applicants who cannot apply after deadlines have passed, the colleges persist in submitting late courses and causing havoc for students and counsellors alike.

The handbook is supposed to be the final list of courses for which applicants may apply. Then, usually in autumn, a further list appears which outlines courses which have been cancelled (13 for 1997), new courses which have been added (five for 1997) or makes any corrections in course codes etc.

Another list appears in spring to bring everyone up to date on the same issues and, lo and behold, this second list is almost as big as the handbook. The colleges themselves are responsible for the content of their own material and therefore for any mistakes that are made. Think of what this does to hard-pressed students. More course research has to be done. Choices have to be put in a different order. Courses which have been cancelled have to be replaced by others. It is ridiculous that this should happen six weeks before the exam. Imagine a guidance counsellor going into a Leaving Cert class this week and telling them that there are now six new course codes which you had never heard of until now (CW 022, a combined science course at Carlow RTC, RC 002 and RC 003, which are both RCSI scholarship programmes, and the last three in Tallaght RTC in humanities, TA 105, TA106 and TA107). Then the counsellor must explain that a whole raft of other courses (six) for which they have applied have now been cancelled (CW 003 and CW004 which now combine to become the new CW022 Science, GA 035, LC002, NC105 and NC205). Then try telling the students that, as well as all that, three courses are lurking somewhere in a college which you have come across by chance but which were not even on the spring list which is supposed to be the final notification to schools before the summer holidays (CW 024, CW025, CW129 all in Carlow RTC).

But, hang on, there will surely be a few more before the unfortunates sit the Leaving Cert not to mention the one that was listed in the original handbook as TA 104 (audio visual communications in Tallaght RTC with a course reference of COMM), which then appeared in the autumn list as new but with a change in course reference to AVIS and once again, has now re-appeared in the spring list as new with the same course code but again with the AVIS reference. And we are still being told it is a new course.