Polytechnic institutes have around 6,600 vacancies while universities have made available around 3,300 vacancies, according to Lusa.

Most courses with the highest entry averages open vacancies again in this 2nd phase, but in many cases there are only one or two places.

However, the course with the highest entry grade in the 1st phase - Aerospace Engineering at the University of Minho - did not open any places in the 2nd phase, remaining with the last student to enter with an average of 18.86 values (on a scale of zero to 20).

But there are alternatives for those who want to pursue Aerospace Engineering: the Instituto Superior Técnico, in Lisbon, the second course with the highest grade (18.68), now has two vacancies; and the Aveiro University course opened a vacancy.

There are also several Medicine courses that have vacancies open again: The University of Coimbra and the University of Beira Interior both have three vacancies; the University of Minho has two vacancies and the Universities of Porto and Lisbon have made one vacancy available.

The approximately 10 thousand vacancies existing in the 2nd phase are essentially the sum of the 5,212 vacancies left over from the 1st phase of CNAES and the places that had been occupied in the 1st phase but for which the students did not register.

Of the 1,119 higher education courses that were available in the 1st phase of CNAES, only 305 courses had places available.

The application for the second phase of CNAES ends on Tuesday and the results will be known on September 17th, with a 3rd phase, which ends at the end of the month.

In the 1st phase, almost 50 thousand students were placed, a number slightly lower than last year, but which meant 84% of candidates were admitted: Of the 59,073 candidates, 49,438 were placed.

More than half of the candidates (56%) managed to choose their first option, with nine out of 10 (87%) choosing one of their first three choices.