61% of eligible DSE candidates get into Hong Kong public universities, down from 70%
The success rate of eligible candidates who sat for the exam to be admitted into Hong Kong's publicly funded universities has fallen from 70 per cent in 2023 to 61 per cent, government statistics show, even as the scrapping of the liberal studies core subject allowed more students to meet minimum entrance requirements.
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According to figures recently submitted by the Education Bureau to the Legislative Council, 19,262 candidates who took the
Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) last year met the minimum requirement to get into the eight local universities.
But only 61 per cent, or 11,837, received offers from varsities via the Joint University Programmes Admissions System (Jupas), a centralised system for those hoping to pursue full-time undergraduate programmes.
The success rate for those eligible students dropped by 9 percentage points compared with 2023, when 70 per cent of DSE candidates were offered places in the city's government-funded universities.
About 50,000 candidates sat the DSE in both 2023 and 2024.
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Last year, 1,356 more students met the minimum entrance requirement than during the previous year. There was a drop in the number of places available at the eight universities through Jupas, from 12,592 in 2023 to 11,837 last year.
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