BENDIGO students are celebrating this week after being accepted into some of Victoria’s most prestigious courses.About 80 per cent of students received offers yesterday, many for their first preference.Girton Grammar School student Bethany Cunning was accepted into her first preference, a bachelor of health science and masters of dentistry at La Trobe University Bendigo.The course ENTER is 99.40, so her score of 96.55 was a concern.However, the lower “fringe” ENTER helped her pull through.“I was a bit worried at the start, but I live here and that helped,” she said.“All last year I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Then I looked at the courses and liked the look of dentistry.“My second preference was engineering here (La Trobe) and I would have been happy with that too.”Ms Cunning said she chose the Bendigo campus for the five-year course because she could live at home.“Also the class sizes are smaller, so you get to spend more time with your tutor.”Fellow Girton Grammar student Sophie Chandler was also accepted into her first preference, bio-medicine at the University of Melbourne.Ms Chandler said the health science course meant she had time to decide on a specialty.”It’s three years - and then I can go into medicine, anything else in health sciences, or even journalism or law.”This year country students were given more incentive to study at Melbourne University.“I got 99.75 and the cut-off was 95, but because I’m from the country the cut-off was 88,” Ms Chandler said.“I think they’re acknowledging that it’s harder for country students to go to university.”Bendigo Senior Secondary College principal Dale Pearce said there had been an increase in the range of offers across a range of institutions.“As usual we will have some students who got what they wanted and some who will have to look at option B.“But there is a lot of support at all schools for students in that situation.”