Your education questions answered by Brian Mooney.

I live in Sligo and my daughter is interested in applying for art and design courses. She has been researching options in the four ITs nearest to her home - IT Sligo, Galway-Mayo IT, Letterkenny IT and Athlone IT. They all offer ordinary degrees in art, design or graphic design. What I cannot understand it why the entry requirements differ, even though they are all ordinary degrees. For example, on their websites Athlone IT, IT Sligo and Galway-Mayo IT all state that their art and design courses at ordinary degree/national diploma level require grade D3 at ordinary level in five subjects in the Leaving Certificate, while IT Letterkenny requires six D3s and 140 points. Different requirements are given in prospectuses and other publications, she has brought home from school. Why is there such a difference between the websites and the published requirements? Why are there differences between ITs if they are all offering the same qualification in the same career area?

It would seem that the introduction of the ordinary degree, to replace the diploma, has caused the institutes of technology to change their entry requirements in an unco-ordinated manner, causing much confusion and disappointment for current Leaving Cert students who chose their subject options in 2003 based on the information available at the time. I believe that students should not be faced with changes in entry requirements once they have made their subject choices in fifth Year. I hope that the institutes of technology will reflect on the difficulty these new regulations are causing current Leaving Cert students and leave in place the entry requirements that existed when these students started their programme in September 2003.

I currently live in Poland. I have lived here for two years and am taking the International Baccalaureate. I plan to take the exams in May and will then move back to Ireland. I was very interested in your article about business programmes at third level. I was wondering if there are any specific requirements I need to meet to study business next year.

When presenting qualifications other than the Irish Leaving Certificate it is advisable to contact the various institutions to which you are applying. Most institutions will operate some form of equivalence between recognised school-leaving examinations in other states and the Leaving Certificate. As the International Baccalaureate is a well-recognised exam, it should be easy enough to establish how the various institutions rate it.

The institutes of technology have published a booklet which explains how they score exams other than the Leaving Cert. This is available on the CAO web site, www.cao.ie, or from any institute of technology. The universities have their own scoring mechanisms and the constituent universities of the National University of Ireland (UCD, UCC, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth) operate an agreed system. You should contact one of these colleges' admissions office for details of the scoring system.

You will need to meet both general matriculation requirements as well as the entry requirements. This means that if mathematics HD3 is required, you will have to present a similar grade for that subject in the International Baccalaureate.

Brian Mooney is president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors. E-mail questions to bmooney@irish- times.ie