THE NEWS is certainly good for the majority of applicants for a college place this year. It is very substantially easier to get into the majority of diploma/ certificate courses in the RTCs and the DIT.

Even good business studies courses, such as in Dundalk, are accessible with less than 200 points, and over 20 RTC courses have failed to fill all their places on Round One, and many will now be advertising for new applications for these courses. (All courses registering AQA have made offers to all minimally eligible applicants on their lists already - see points lists on back page of this supplement).

Many good RTC diploma/certificate courses are offering places at 130-200 points, so any student with a minimum of five ordinary passes in the Leaving Cert should have been able to get a place offer.

The problem is that there is a geographical slant to all of this. There are virtually no RTC or DIT courses in Dublin offering at less than 200 points. So to get a college place on the lower points, students effectively have to travel outside of Dublin. The demand for places is much higher in Dublin because of the much bigger population and most of the DIT and RTC Tallaght diploma/certificate courses require 300 plus points.

Students living close to - or prepared to travel to - Athlone, Carlow, Dundalk, Letterkenny, Sligo or Limerick RTCs, on the other hand, have been able to get place offers on as low as 150 points.

The other problem with the offers is that, while those with modest points are finding it increasingly easier to get an RTC college place, points remain very high for many degree courses.a There have been drops in points for quite a few degree courses, but the most highly sought after degrees are still in the 500 or late 400 category.

At UCD, actuarial studies has risen to the dizzying heights of 595 points, which is sailing perilously close to the maximum of 600 - though it should be borne in mind that the 595 contains a bonus for higher maths, so it is an inflated figure. It still requires 575 points to get a place in veterinary science, which is the equivalent of six As with a few of them at Al level. Even at that, random selection - or computerised lottery - operated, which means that not all students on 575 got an offer.

Medicine has also got more difficult with UCD remaining on 570*, and Trinity jumping from 555 last year to 570 this year. Physiotherapy has clearly become very popular. The British UCAS reports most physiotherapy courses are full there and at UCD it now requires five points more - 575 - to get into physiotherapy than into medicine. Combination degrees involving law or business with a language are also registering very high points.

But it would be wrong to assume that the high points registered for some courses signify large numbers of very high achieving applicants. In many eases, the high points come about as a result of only a handful of places being available on a course. Thus therapeutic radiography at Trinity (520 points) has only 10 places on offer, as do both law/French (570) and law/ German (520) in the same college.

The fact that Greek is registering 570 points in Trinity does not mean that there has been a sudden surge in applications, simply that they had no applicants below this level.

College applicants are clearly influenced by trends in the employment market. Thus, for example, most courses in the computing area and many in electronics are registering increased points. This is the case even in RTCs where points for other courses are falling. Applicants will have been aware of the excellent job prospects in computer software and electronics and been

Similarly, the boom in the property market is reflected in high points for architecture/architectural technician/auctioneering/ surveying courses. In the DIT, for example, the architectural technician course has jumped from 458 last year to 510 this year. (There are additional points for the assessment/interview in DIT architectural courses.)

The buoyancy in jobs for business/accountancy/financial graduates is also reflected in the points with business studies up in Trinity, DCU and UL, for example, and the accounting degrees at both UCC and DCU are also up.

Points for science and engineering - other than electronics - degrees on the other hand haven generally fallen.

The points reflect Leaving Cert results also. Many courses involving maths or requiring higher maths are showing an increase in points - probably as a result of the 15 per cent of A grades in higher maths in the Leaving thus the maths degree has jumped from 425 to 480 in Trinity and this would also be a factor in the case of actuarial studies at UCD.

The percentage of A and B grades also increased substantially in this year's Leaving Cert. And, interestingly, while the points for the main teacher training colleges fell by five, those for the Gaeltacht quotas in the colleges rose by a startling 45 points in the case of St Pat's in Drumcondra; points for the Ceim in Airgeada is at DCU have gone from 415 to 470.

There has been very little movement in arts degrees and, with UCC and UCD registering 390* and 385* respectively, they still have a lot of students who got these points but failed to get a place on the random selection. There will probably be some more offers on these points levels on Round Two, but possibly not many.

With the high level of offers made on Round One - 46,310 as against 46,126 last year - there are unlikely to be many places on degree courses on offer on Round Two - but there will be diploma/certificate offers. Last year only about 1,000 offers in total were made on Round Two - and this included courses making their first offers on Round Two.

. NO OFFER

The CAO office got quite a number of calls yesterday from students who had the points for an offer but failed to get one; the reason turned out to be that they had failed to register that they had sat the Leaving Cert twice on their application form. Students in this predicament should contact their college admissions office immediately.

So overall are points up or down? Unfortunately the answer is that they are both up for the highly sought after, very competitive degree courses and down for many of the certificate/diploma courses. This was entirely predictable - when points fall they fall from the bottom up, so to speak; and as long as the number of places in medicine, veterinary, physiotherapy and the like remain restricted, then the points are unlikely to fall for these courses.

. DEPOSITS

Applicants will have noticed that the deposits listed for UCC and UL on their offer form are £180 rather than the routine £150. A spokesman for the Minister for Education has explained that the extra £30 is for the building of students facilities and that the students unions in the colleges approved this additional contribution. Apparently, a referendum of students was held at UCC to approve the charge.

Such charges cannot rise higher without student approval, according to the Department of Education. "There are occasional voluntary contributions to fund better facilities for students and can only operate with the agreement of student unions."

. ROUND TWO

Two courses on the CAO/CAS list will not make their first offers until round two. In the case of clinical speech in Trinity candidates are being interviewed and in UL they have done physical tests with all applicants on 500 plus points for the PE teaching course. Offers will be sent out in Round Two.

. NURSING

The Nursing Applications Centre is posting offers for the nursing diploma course today. Successful applicants should get their offer tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. If you have no offer by Thursday, you can assume that you have not been successful.

. COLLEGE OF SURGEONS

Offer of places in the College of Surgeons will be made on Friday of this week.