MORE girls than boys get into university, but the majority of the intake into RTCs and the DIT is male. In the case of the universities, women account for 53 per cent of the intake as against 47 per cent for males. But in the DIT, it is 44 per cent female and 56 per cent male and 42:58 in favour of males in total RTC intake.

In teacher training colleges, however, 90 per cent of the intake is female.

Every university, with the exception of UL, takes in more female than male students. At 57 per cent, UCC and Maynooth vie for top place in the percentage of female entrants.

The RTCs vary wildly, with two-thirds of the intake male in Cork, Carlow, and Limerick, while Galway, Letterkenny, Sligo and Athlone are almost 50:50. In the DIT, the intake into Bolton St is 80 per cent male and into Cathal Brugha Street (mainly catering courses) almost 80 per cent female.

Many students are clearly no strangers to repeats

Strangely, the pattern appears to be that the higher the points needed to get into a college, the lower the proportion of the intake which will have repeated. Thus around 20 per cent of the intake into most of the universities have repeated the Leaving. However, it is 30 per cent in the case of Maynooth DCU. interestingly. stands at only 13 per cent.

Perhaps surprisingly. the highest proportion of repeat students are amongst the ranks of RTC entrants where roughly a quarter of the entrants into all RTCs (except Waterford and Tallaght at 20 per cent) are repeat students. Perhaps students repeat for high points colleges. fail to make it and decide to opt for whatever is on offer second time round.

Perhaps not unrelated to the pattern of repeats. the age at which students start college is going up, with two-thirds of all entrants now aged 18 or over, indeed almost 20 per cent are aged 19 to 21. All colleges have an extremely low level of mature intake; if anything the RTCs have a worse record than the universities in this respect.

For all the hype about the points needed for medicine, law etc, it is sobering to realise that one third of all those entering university do an arts degree. Sixteen per cent do a science degree; 14 per cent a business degree degree; 10 per cent engineering; 6 per cent medicine and 2 per cent law.

In the case of Maynooth 70 per cent of its intake do arts 46 per cent in UCC; 40 per cent in UCD, but only 32 per cent in Trinity. Meanwhile 27 per cent of UL's intake is accounted for by engineering students (hence the lower female intake).

We all know that you require higher points to get into medicine and veterinary than arts; but what we don't know is whether there are just as many high flyers doing arts. However, a new Higher Education Authority report shows that 65 per cent of entrants into veterinary had seven "honours"; 60 per cent in the case of law; 56 per cent for medicine; 55 per cent for architecture and 52 per cent for dentistry. But only 8 per cent of arts degree entrants had seven Honours".