Goce Delcev University in Stip has opened 3,341 places for first-year students in the first enrolment round. Applications run for three days - 19, 20 and 21 August, across twelve faculties and three academies.

Rector Dejan Mirakovski announced that the electronic application system is already open and active, and that more than 1,560 applications have come in so far. That is about 28 percent more candidates than in the same period last year.

Of the total number of available places, 1,692 are in the state quota, 972 are for co-financed students, and 735 are for part-time students. Documents are accepted electronically or in person in Stip and Strumica. Preliminary results will be published on 26 August, the final admission decisions on 31 August, and the enrolment of admitted candidates on 1, 2 and 3 September.

The strongest interest is in the Faculty of Medical Sciences, followed by the Faculty of Computer Science, and the Faculties of Economics and Law. Candidates scoring over 80 points are exempt from tuition contributions, and students of Macedonian language at the Faculty of Philology study free of charge for all four years.

The number worth looking at twice

Twenty-eight percent more applications than last year sounds like a success and will most likely be presented as one. But with enrolment, the value of a percentage depends on what sits underneath it - whether there really are more interested school leavers, or simply more available places on offer and an application system that opened earlier. The final figure will not be known until the third round closes.

What is worth noting is which faculties are pulling the candidates: medicine, computer science, economics, law. The same four for decades. The university is at the same time seeing interest from students in Turkey, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria in its English-language programmes - which is good news for Stip, because a foreign student who comes here pays, lives and spends here.

That leaves three days in which a school leaver has to decide where four years of their life are going. With a bit of luck, at least some of them will pick a faculty based on what they want to do, rather than on where the places happen to be.