CUHK Medicine Admissions: 300 Places on the Six-Year MBChB and the New Four-Year GET Route

Module: 01 Academics · Sub-file: Faculty of Medicine in depth Last updated: 10 July 2026 The CUHK Faculty of Medicine is one of two medical schools in Hong Kong, with the Prince of Wales Hospital as its main teaching hospital. This article details its historical milestones, the logic behind the evolution of its five schools plus 14 clinical/basic science departments, and its landmark research achievements. This article focuses on the institutional structure of schools/departments and curricular evolution; the history of the hospitals, the clinical timeline of SARS and the biography of the founding Dean are covered in Module 11 (see cross-references at the end), with the two sides linking to each other rather than duplicating content. For the full list of departments see departments.md; for an overview of the faculties see faculties.md.

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# 1. Historical milestones

According to the Faculty of Medicine's "Milestones" page and the University Gallery（医学院 Milestones）^※:

According to the University Gallery, the Faculty of Medicine's history began with approval in 1974 and first admissions in 1981 — a different era from the three founding faculties of Arts, Science and Social Science established in 1963（校史馆 Zone A）^※. From the 1968 proposal by an Urban Council member to the first intake in 1981, the gestation of the medical school lasted thirteen years — not unusual for CUHK, but a reflection of the long cycle that establishing a medical school requires in legislation, site selection, construction and faculty recruitment.

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# 2. Structure: five schools + 14 clinical/basic science departments

According to the Faculty of Medicine's website, the Faculty oversees 19 teaching schools, departments and units（医学院官网）^※. The number "19" itself tells a story of expansion: at its founding the medical school had a single thread, clinical medicine; today it has grown into a two-tier structure of "5 schools + 14 departments" — the School tier housing disciplines with relative independence and their own degree systems (nursing, pharmacy, public health, biomedical sciences, Chinese medicine), and the Department tier housing the traditional specialties tightly bound to clinical rotations at the Prince of Wales Hospital.

# 1. The five schools

The five schools were founded across a span of more than two decades, from 1991 to 2013 — which means the five schools that today appear "side by side" actually grew out in stages, each responding to different social needs at different times: nursing and pharmacy came first in the early 1990s (answering Hong Kong's healthcare staffing needs); the School of Public Health arrived in 2001 in response to the need for early warning against emerging global infectious disease threats; the School of Biomedical Sciences consolidated basic medical research in 2010; and in 2013 the School of Chinese Medicine was transferred from the Faculty of Science following a rethinking of its disciplinary positioning.

# 2. The 14 clinical/basic science departments

Anaesthesia and Intensive Care; Anatomical and Cellular Pathology; Chemical Pathology; Clinical Oncology; Imaging and Interventional Radiology; Medicine and Therapeutics; Microbiology; Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences; Orthopaedics and Traumatology; Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery; Paediatrics; Psychiatry; Surgery（医学院官网）^※.

These 14 departments fall roughly into two groups. One is the diagnostic/supportive departments (Anatomical and Cellular Pathology, Chemical Pathology, Imaging and Interventional Radiology, Microbiology, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care) — they do not see outpatients directly but provide laboratory testing, imaging, anaesthesia and similar support to the other clinical departments. The other is the clinical specialty departments (Medicine and Therapeutics, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Psychiatry, Orthopaedics, Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology, Clinical Oncology) — these are directly responsible for outpatient, inpatient and surgical services in their respective specialties. This twofold structure of "supportive + clinical specialty" maps closely onto the departmental setup of the Prince of Wales Hospital as a regional acute-care hospital, reflecting how tightly the Faculty's departmental structure is coupled to the hospital's clinical units under the "teaching hospital" model.

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# 3. Teaching hospital system

• Prince of Wales Hospital: opened in 1984 in Sha Tin, the Faculty's main clinical teaching hospital（医学院 Milestones）^※; its construction history, scale data and the full clinical timeline of the 2003 SARS outbreak within the hospital are covered in 11-medical-hospital/prince-of-wales-and-sars.md.
• Clinical teaching also extends to United Christian Hospital (from 1983) and other public hospitals, with students rotating across multiple teaching hospitals within their clinical departments.
• CUHK Medical Centre (CUHKMC): Hong Kong's first non-profit private teaching hospital, opened in phases from January 2021 — the first phase offered day services including general and specialist outpatient clinics, ophthalmology, endoscopy, physiotherapy, radiology and cardiac investigations, with inpatient and day beds added progressively thereafter（CUHK Medical Centre，维基百科）^※. The 14-storey hospital building has approximately 600 beds, 28 operating theatres and 56 consultation rooms, and serves as the Faculty's second teaching hospital. By its own stated positioning, all operating surplus is ploughed back into the hospital's development and the Faculty's teaching and research, with no dividends to shareholders — a governance design of "non-profit, self-financing" that runs in parallel with and complementary to the public Hospital Authority system to which the Prince of Wales Hospital belongs: the latter carries the bulk of public acute care and routine clinical teaching, while the former gives the Faculty a testing ground for private medicine, advanced specialties and new-technology translation. See 11-medical-hospital/faculty-of-medicine.md.

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# 4. Programmes: from the six-year track to four-year graduate entry

• Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB): follows the six-year British-style curriculum; first intake of 60 in 1981, with regular annual intakes of several hundred; first cohort graduated 1986; recognised by the UK General Medical Council following its 1987 review.
• According to the official curriculum page^※ and the admissions page^※ of the Faculty, from 2025 onwards, alongside the traditional six-year MBChB, the Faculty has introduced a four-year Graduate Entry Track (GET) — aimed at applicants who already hold a recognised bachelor's degree, building on the knowledge and skills acquired in their first degree to complete medical training in four years. From 2025, degree holders and final-year students applying through the Non-JUPAS route are automatically considered for GET. According to official information, from 2025 the MBChB intake is approximately 300 places for secondary-school leavers plus 25 places for degree holders (GET-specific).
• Policy rationale for GET: according to official statements, GET aims to train more doctors in a shorter cycle to alleviate Hong Kong's healthcare manpower shortage — the first time in more than four decades that the Faculty has introduced a second admission and training pathway alongside the six-year track, responding in some measure to Hong Kong's sustained public debate over the doctor supply.
• Degree programmes in biomedical sciences, pharmacy, nursing, public health and Chinese medicine fall under their respective schools; see the school-by-school sections of faculty-of-medicine.md.
• Research MPhil/PhD programmes are offered by the clinical/basic science departments and administered under the Graduate School (see programs.md).

# Global Physician-Leadership Stream (GPS): the elite track within the MBChB

The Global Physician-Leadership Stream (GPS), established in 2013 together with "Asia's first Global Physician-Leadership programme", is not a separate degree but an optional specialisation track within the MBChB — with higher admission thresholds than the standard MBChB, and a curriculum adding overseas exchange, research training and leadership development elements, aimed at producing doctors who combine clinical competence with a global outlook. According to the Faculty's official admissions data, GPS has for 11 consecutive years since its launch recorded the highest median admission scores of any medical programme in Hong Kong（医学院收生新闻稿）^※. GET and GPS are both recent admissions innovations at the Faculty, but they target different populations: GPS offers a "cream of the cream" track for top HKDSE school-leavers, while GET offers a four-year fast-track "career switch into medicine" for those who already hold a bachelor's degree. The two run in parallel, drawing on different applicant pools.

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# 5. Admissions competitiveness and subject rankings

In one sentence: the CUHK medical school is not only the subject with the highest concentration of "top-scoring students" in Hong Kong; its clinical and basic science disciplines have also broadly risen to the first tier in Asia in the latest round of international rankings.

# 1. DSE admissions: scores, competition intensity and the "top-scorer magnet" effect

According to the 2024/25 admissions data disclosed in the Faculty's official press release（医学院收生新闻稿）^※:

DSE scoring works on a scale of 5**=7 points, 5*=6 points and so on downwards, giving a maximum of 42 points across six subjects; for candidates who sit the HKDSE more than once, the Faculty applies an additional 10% deduction per the official policy — a detail that in some measure reflects the University's tilt toward candidates taking the exam "once and for all". Year-by-year score bands for individual programmes, interview weightings and Non-JUPAS/GET application details belong to Module 02 Admissions and complement this article's focus on structure and curricular evolution; see programs.md.

# 2. Global subject rankings: from "leading in Asia" to "global top 1%"

According to the QS World University Rankings by Subject and the 2026 US News & World Report results（PR Newswire 新闻稿）^※:

This ranking landscape of "multiple disciplines advancing in parallel" in some measure echoes the three traditional strengths — NIPT, SARS genome sequencing and endoscopic robotics — mentioned in the "Landmark research achievements" section below: the sustained international lead of gastroenterology, clinical medicine and nursing sits in reciprocal confirmation with the Faculty's decades of research accumulation in these fields.

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# 6. Landmark research achievements

The CUHK Faculty of Medicine has international impact in molecular diagnostics, endoscopic surgery and infectious disease research, as set out below on the basis of public press releases and public reporting.

# 1. Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT)

• In 1997, a CUHK Faculty of Medicine team reported the presence of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma, laying the theoretical foundation for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT); the resulting non-invasive Down syndrome screening technology has reportedly been applied in more than 90 countries/regions worldwide, with more than 1 million pregnant women in mainland China alone undergoing such testing every year.
• The principal inventor in this field is the current Vice-Chancellor of CUHK; per the University's public press-release records, his research honours include the inaugural Future Science Prize in Life Science (2016) and the 2022 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award — the latter often described as a "Nobel Prize bellwether", and making him the 5th Chinese scientist to receive the award in its 75-year history（传讯处新闻稿）^※. In line with this site's convention, current leadership is referred to by title in university-governance/dispute contexts; the facts here belong to his research career before taking up university administration, but for consistent treatment this article refers to "the CUHK Faculty of Medicine team / the current Vice-Chancellor" without expanding into biography (biographical entries belong to Module 06).

# 2. SARS coronavirus research (2003)

• During the 2003 SARS outbreak, the CUHK medical team was among the first in the world to determine the coronavirus gene sequence (the third globally to publish the complete genome sequence, with the isolate named CUHK-W1), and took part in scientific research on viral mutation; the full clinical timeline of the Prince of Wales Hospital outbreak is covered in 11-medical-hospital/prince-of-wales-and-sars.md.

# 3. Endoscopic and surgical robotics

• The current Dean, Professor Philip Chiu Wai-yan, holds several "world first" records in endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and surgical robotics, as publicly recorded in Faculty press releases（任命新闻稿）^※. According to the Faculty's official press release, the team successfully completed the world's first ESD treatment of colorectal cancer using a flexible endoscopic robotic system (EndoMaster EASE) — the colorectal wall is thin and the bowel curved, so traditional ESD carries a higher risk of perforation; the team's robotic platform can lift the cutting plane and improve the surgical view, and in the first 6 patients none experienced perforation, with all able to eat the day after surgery and discharged within two days（世界首宗大肠 ESD 机械人手术新闻稿）^※. Professor Chiu himself was the first doctor in Hong Kong to introduce ESD, and the stated goal of his team's robotic-platform development is to raise the detection rate of early gastrointestinal cancers in the Asia-Pacific region. This technical path of "minimally invasive diagnosis + robotic treatment" in some measure also explains the research foundations behind gastroenterology's long-held top ranking in Asia in the table above.

# 4. Public health, nursing and pharmacy: three subject lines rarely highlighted but ranking high

International attention on the Faculty tends to concentrate on the three "star achievements" of NIPT, SARS and endoscopic robotics, but the Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, the Nethersole School of Nursing and the School of Pharmacy each have their own accomplishments: the School of Public Health and Primary Care was Hong Kong's first school of its kind (2001) and has long worked on infectious disease surveillance modelling and primary-care policy research; the Nethersole School of Nursing, per the QS ranking data above, has for years held first place in Hong Kong and a leading position in Asia; and the School of Pharmacy launched Hong Kong's first UGC-funded pharmacy degree (1992), with a curriculum spanning drug development, clinical pharmacy and pharmacovigilance. Together with clinical and basic medical sciences, the three complete the Faculty's spectrum of public health–nursing–pharmacy beyond the "big clinical medicine" core, though the specific research centres and key laboratories are detailed in Module 04 Research.

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# 7. At a glance

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