More than 64,000 students will receive their Leaving Certificate results tomorrow. The largest number, 16,859, will be in Dublin; the smallest, 570, will be in Leitrim; and 19 students in Libya and 11 in Malaysia will be waiting in agonised anticipation for the news from the faraway Athlone count centre.
Almost 59,300 students, including 5,000 repeat students, will visit their schools to pick up results.
More than 4,100 external candidates, many of them adults, will receive theirs through the post, either at home or a local school.
The number receiving results is slightly up on the past two years, from less than 59,200 in 1996, when the numbers were affected by the introduction of Transition Year, and 63,230 last year.
This year will see a historic change in the exam appeals system, with students having the right to see marked exam papers before appealing.
When students collect their results tomorrow morning, they will also receive a printed form which they will have to return by August 29th, specifying the papers they wish to see.
Papers will be available for viewing in schools during one of three three-hourly sessions on September 4th and 5th.
As far as possible, they will be viewed in exam centre conditions, and each school will have at least two superintendents to oversee the viewing.
Despite some early grumbling from the secondary teachers' union, ASTI, about the impact of the exercise in transparency by the Minister for Education, Mr Martin, on the heavy start-of-year workload for members, there were about 2,500 applications for the job of organising superintendents in the 800 second-level schools.
All these will be teachers and they will each take on an assistant superintendent.
Junior Certificate results will be available in schools in mid-September.