Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programmes at CUHK

Module: 01 Academics · Sub-file: Programme Structure Last updated: 10 July 2026 According to the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, the University's eight Faculties collectively offer more than 380 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes(Admissions "Faculties and Programmes" page)^※; through JUPAS, the main admissions route for local HKDSE candidates, over 70 programme choices covering more than 80 majors are available at the undergraduate level alone(Admissions JUPAS page)^※. This article maps the structure in three layers — undergraduate, postgraduate, and the legal profession pathway. For details on academic structure, credit requirements and General Education, see academic-system.md; for the history of the eight Faculties, see faculties.md; for a full list of departments, see departments.md.

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# 1. Undergraduate Programmes

# 1.1 Degrees and Admissions Overview

• Duration: Four-year undergraduate degrees (following the 2012 "3+3+4" education reform); the MBChB (Medicine) lasts six years, and professional programmes such as the LLB have their own durations.
• Admissions routes: Local students are admitted primarily through the Joint University Programmes Admissions System (JUPAS); non-local students enter via Non-JUPAS or international-student routes. According to Facts and Figures 2024/25, 3,019 students were admitted through JUPAS in 2024(Facts and Figures 2024/25)^※.
• Student numbers: The same publication puts the undergraduate population at 18,438 (15,742 local and 2,696 non-local)(Facts and Figures 2024/25)^※.

Notably, CUHK states that admission is not simply a matter of ranking public-exam scores. According to the Admissions Office, selection is competitive and not based on HKDSE grades alone; alongside the exam results, the University takes into account Other Experiences and Achievements in Community Service (OEA) submitted with the JUPAS application, competition and activity records, school results, school recommendations and interview performance(Admissions JUPAS page)^※. In other words, a programme's actual admissions threshold is presented both as a score band (upper quartile, median, lower quartile) and as leeway for interviews and portfolios. This stance — "scores set the bar, interviews and portfolios decide the order" — is most visible in popular programmes with interviews, such as Medicine, Nursing, Global Business and Journalism. Specific score bands and programme requirements are covered in Module 02 Admissions.

# 1.2 Broad-based Admissions

Some CUHK Faculties practise broad-based admissions: most majors in the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Social Science admit students under a "Faculty/Division" umbrella. Students first complete a common foundation before declaring a major, reducing the risk of premature specialisation. This is one of the defining features of a CUHK undergraduate education; see the "Major / Minor" section of academic-system.md for details.

The logic of broad-based admissions is to spare sixth-formers from betting on a single major: they enter under a broad category such as "Science" or "Social Science", sample several disciplines in Year 1, and only then stream into a major. This lowers the sunk cost of "choosing wrong" and makes transfers between departments smoother. For the Faculties, admitting by category also helps balance enrolment across majors — popular subjects do not drain the less fashionable departments dry at the JUPAS stage. The trade-off is that students remain uncertain of their eventual major after enrolment; if applications for one major exceed its quota, allocation is typically based on Year 1 GPA. Conversely, Medicine, Law, Architecture, and selected Engineering and Business programmes admit students directly to a specific degree, since their professional training must be streamed from the very first year.

# 1.3 Degree Types (Selected)

JUPAS codes, admission scores and specific requirements for each undergraduate programme are set out in the official Admissions Office and JUPAS materials (covered in Module 02 Admissions).

# 1.4 The Eight Faculties and their Undergraduate Offerings

CUHK's undergraduate programmes are organised under the eight Faculties, each with its own system of majors. With the single exception of the Faculty of Law, every Faculty offers a Faculty Package, allowing students to take up to 9 credits of courses within the same Faculty beyond their major — breadth first, specialisation later(Admissions "Undergraduate Curriculum")^※. The table below lists representative undergraduate degrees and positioning by Faculty.

Most majors in the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Social Science are admitted under broad-based categories: candidates are admitted to the Faculty first and declare a major after enrolment(Admissions JUPAS page)^※. Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and similar programmes admit to specific degrees and hold interviews. A full list of departments and their home Faculties appears in departments.md; the Medical Faculty's five-School structure is covered in deepdive-medicine.md.

Each of the eight Faculties has a distinct character. The Faculty of Arts is built around humanities departments and admits largely by department; its distinctive units — Translation, Music, Fine Arts — go their own way (see special-departments.md). The Faculty of Business Administration's flagships are Global Business (GBUS) and Integrated BBA (IBBA), both interview-heavy and fiercely competitive. Engineering is the main incubator of new interdisciplinary programmes, with Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Information Engineering admitted mostly through broad-based categories. Science and Social Science take "broad-based" to its logical end: nearly the whole Faculty shares a single entry portal. Medicine is the opposite — MBChB, Nursing, Pharmacy and Chinese Medicine each admit independently, balancing high thresholds with interviews. Education marries disciplinary training with professional teacher preparation, while Law operates as a single integrated Faculty with no Faculty Package — unique among the eight. This mix of Faculty-level and programme-level admissions is precisely why the CUHK undergraduate map resists easy generalisation.

# 1.5 Minors, Double Majors and Degree Combinations

Beyond the basic skeleton of "one major + General Education + University core", CUHK undergraduates enjoy considerable latitude to combine laterally:

• Minor: A minor consists of 18 to 30 credits of coherent courses within one discipline; students may take up to two minors(Admissions "Undergraduate Curriculum")^※.
• Double Major: Satisfy the credit requirements of a second major and have both recorded on the same degree at graduation.
• Double Degree: Complete the full requirements of two independent degrees and be awarded both (e.g. combinations run by Business Administration and Engineering; the Faculty of Law's BBA–JD and JD–MBA).
• Capstone: Every major includes a capstone component — a research project, internship, or final-year thesis/dissertation — as the culmination of four years of study(Admissions "Undergraduate Curriculum")^※.

Credit rules, General Education and language requirements are detailed in the "Major / Minor" and "General Education" sections of academic-system.md.

# 1.6 New Interdisciplinary Programmes

Responding to shifts in technology and industry, CUHK has recently launched a wave of interdisciplinary undergraduate programmes, most of them bracketing "engineering + business + data" in their titles:

The FinTech programme, for instance, threads together big-data analytics, financial engineering and business decision-making, and allows students to stack an additional FinTech–IBBA double major or double degree on top(Admissions FinTech programme page)^※. The AI programmes, by contrast, stress mathematical and scientific foundations and target applicants with strong science credentials.

These new programmes share three traits. First, cross-Faculty naming: FinTech straddles Business, Engineering and Science; Biotechnology, Entrepreneurship and Healthcare Management spans life sciences and business; Learning Design and Technology sets education alongside information technology. They no longer sit inside a single department; instead, "a technical capability × an application domain" is written directly into the programme title. Second, composability: most of the new programmes are themselves open to stacking a double major or double degree, so students are choosing an entry point, not a sealed four-year path. Third, alignment with industry: the timing of the AI, data-science and FinTech launches broadly tracks Hong Kong's policy push on innovation and financial digitalisation in recent years. For prospective students, the practical upshot is that CUHK's "list of majors" is not a static table but a dynamic catalogue that gains several new cross-disciplinary entry points every year or two. The latest complete list is the one published by the Admissions Office.

# 1.7 The Flagship Route into Medicine: MBChB and the Global Physician-Leadership Stream (GPS)

The Faculty of Medicine's Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) is a six-year programme delivered through the integrated "SMART" curriculum(CUHK Medicine)^※. Alongside the mainstream MBChB, the Faculty also runs the Global Physician-Leadership Stream (GPS, JUPAS code JS4502), which the Faculty describes as Asia's first undergraduate medical leadership programme(CUHK Medicine GPS overview)^※.

GPS layers leadership training, overseas exchanges and research placements on top of the standard medical curriculum. High-achieving HKDSE candidates may be admitted directly into Year 2 and may choose an additional intercalated enrichment year, an option aimed at students interested in health policy, medical education and public-health administration(Admissions MBChB-GPS page)^※. Graduates of both MBChB and GPS must complete a one-year internship before registering as doctors in Hong Kong. The Faculty's departments and teaching-hospital structure are covered in deepdive-medicine.md.

# 1.8 Beyond JUPAS: Non-JUPAS and International Admissions

The HKDSE is not the only ticket into CUHK. Alongside JUPAS, the main route for local students, applicants with other qualifications enter through Non-JUPAS (local Year 1) or the international-student route:

• Non-JUPAS (local Year 1): for local applicants holding qualifications other than the HKDSE. Acceptable qualifications include GCE A-Level / International A-Level (passes in three AL subjects, or two AL plus two AS), the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma, and various overseas high-school qualifications (e.g. US high-school diploma with SAT/ACT and AP, Australian ATAR, Canadian OSSD/BC, Indian CBSE/ISC)(Admissions Non-JUPAS requirements)^※.
• Mainland gaokao candidates: current-year gaokao candidates do not apply directly to CUHK; instead they apply through the early-batch admissions of the National Unified College Entrance Examination (gaokao) — after results are released, they list CUHK (institution code 81002) in the early batch of their provincial system, and selection is by gaokao score (excluding bonus points), usually without an interview(Admissions Non-JUPAS requirements)^※.
• Advanced Standing: applicants holding certain qualifications (e.g. GCE A-Level, IB, Cambridge Pre-U, associate degree/higher diploma) may apply for admission "with advanced standing", reducing the minimum credits required for graduation by up to 24 credits — in effect completing the degree in around three years(Admissions Non-JUPAS requirements)^※.

This multi-entry design sits naturally with the nearly 2,700 non-local undergraduates recorded in Facts and Figures: students from different academic systems converge, via their own routes, on the same set of four-year programmes. Score conversion, language requirements and deadlines for each route are covered in Module 02 Admissions.

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# 2. Postgraduate Programmes

# 2.1 The Graduate School: Central Oversight

• Standing: founded in 1966, the first Graduate School in Hong Kong(University Gallery, Zone A)^※.
• Scale: according to the Graduate School, it oversees postgraduate programmes across all eight Faculties; the Graduate School website and recent admissions materials list more than 220–230 postgraduate programmes, with over 6,000 postgraduate degrees, diplomas and certificates awarded each year(Graduate School, "The Graduate School")^※.
• Student numbers: Facts and Figures 2024/25 records roughly 6,300 postgraduate students (local and non-local combined)(Facts and Figures 2024/25)^※.

The Graduate School occupies a peculiar place in CUHK's architecture, and not only because it was the first in Hong Kong. It is the single gateway and single quality checkpoint for postgraduate studies: whether an applicant is aiming at an MPhil in History in the Faculty of Arts, a doctorate in Engineering, or a taught master's in Business Administration, application, admission standards and degree conferral are all co-ordinated centrally by the Graduate School, with day-to-day academic oversight delegated to the Graduate Divisions of individual Faculties. This division of labour — "centre sets the rules, divisions run the academics" — keeps standards consistent across the eight Faculties without throttling disciplinary autonomy. Where the undergraduate stage runs on the twin tracks of "Faculties for academics, Colleges for whole-person education", the postgraduate stage is a two-tier structure of "Graduate School + Graduate Division". Together the three lines form the tripartite governance skeleton CUHK is often summarised by: Faculties, Colleges and the Graduate School.

# 2.2 Degree Types

# 2.3 Governance Structure

The Graduate School is the central administrative body; each postgraduate programme is housed in the Graduate Division of its home Faculty, and the Division head reports jointly to the Graduate School Dean and the Head of Department / Faculty Dean(Graduate School, "The Graduate School")^※. This mirrors the dual-track undergraduate arrangement of "Faculties + Colleges", completing the three-layer structure: Faculties for academics, Colleges for whole-person education, and the Graduate School for postgraduate affairs.

# 2.4 Research Degrees and the Articulated MPhil–PhD

Entry requirements for research degrees (MPhil/PhD) are set centrally by the Graduate School. For a PhD, applicants are generally expected to hold a master's degree from a recognised university, or a bachelor's degree with honours not lower than Second Class and an average grade of not lower than "B", or equivalent professional qualifications carrying standing comparable to an honours degree(Graduate School admissions requirements)^※.

CUHK's Articulated MPhil–PhD lets students enter with a bachelor's degree and proceed straight to the doctorate: they are admitted either into the MPhil stream or as "PhD (pre-candidacy)", and only after completing coursework, passing the qualifying examination, and submitting and defending a thesis proposal during the candidacy period do they advance to "PhD (post-candidacy)", the stage of writing up and sitting the oral examination(Graduate School study options)^※. This two-stage "pre-candidacy → candidacy" design is the crucial difference between research and taught degrees — the latter graduate on completing prescribed credits, the former on passing the qualifying examination and thesis defence.

# 2.5 The Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS)

CUHK is one of the participating institutions in the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS). Administered by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC), the Scheme targets exceptional doctoral applicants from around the world. For the 2026/27 academic year, awardees receive an annual stipend of HK$344,400 (roughly HK$28,700 per month), plus a conference and research travel allowance of up to HK$14,400 per year, for a maximum award period of three years(RGC HKPFS)^※. The Fellowship is frequently stacked with CUHK's own entrance scholarships and is one of the Graduate School's principal instruments for attracting international researchers. Applications are submitted first through the HKPFS system and then formally to the research programmes of the chosen institutions.

# 2.6 Medium of Instruction and English Requirements

Postgraduate programmes at CUHK are taught primarily in English (with Chinese-medium instruction in selected programmes such as Chinese Studies, Translation and Chinese Medicine). According to the Graduate School, applicants must satisfy the minimum English requirement: a degree from a Hong Kong university, or a degree taught in English, satisfies it outright; otherwise a specified English test score is required, such as TOEFL 79 (internet-based or home edition, out of 120) or IELTS (Academic) 6.5(Graduate School admissions requirements)^※. Taught master's programmes each set their own English thresholds, with some business and law programmes demanding more.

# 2.7 The Taught Master's Landscape: Business Administration as a Microcosm

Among the more than 220 postgraduate programmes, the majority are taught master's degrees — closer to the job market, often available part-time, and completed by accumulating credits; their logic is diametrically opposed to that of research degrees. The Faculty of Business Administration is a typical microcosm: aside from undergraduate programmes, the MBA, EMBA and DBA, it runs a suite of MSc degrees — MBA, MBA in Finance, Actuarial Science and Insurance Analytics, Aviation Management, Business Analytics, Finance and others — in both full-time and part-time modes(Graduate School, Business Administration programme page)^※. The Faculty reports an enrolled student body of around 4,400 including its taught programmes.

This "employment-oriented, part-time-friendly" positioning of taught master's repeats across Education, Engineering, Social Science and Medicine: they absorb the continuing-education needs of working professionals, sitting on a different track from the research MPhil/PhD programmes administered by the Graduate School — one track points at career advancement, the other at academic research. Grasping this divide is the key to reading the headline figures of ">220 programmes, >6,000 degrees": the bulk of the count is taught degrees, while the research side, smaller in number, is the University's main source of research manpower.

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# 3. The Faculty of Law: Programmes and the Path to Practice

The Faculty of Law operates as one integrated Faculty without departments, spanning undergraduate, postgraduate and professional-certificate levels(Faculty of Law website)^※:

# 3.1 Degrees and Certificates

# 3.2 LLM Specialisations

According to the Faculty of Law, the LLM offers a range of specialisations, including AI and Law, Chinese Business Law, Common Law, Energy and Environmental Law, International Economic Law and Legal History(Faculty of Law website)^※.

# 3.3 LLB vs JD: What Distinguishes the Two Routes?

CUHK Law offers two foundational law degrees, pitched at readers at different stages:

The LLB is built on the Hong Kong and English common-law tradition; compulsory subjects cover Contract Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law, Criminal Law, Tort Law, Equity and Trusts, Company Law, Land Law, Commercial Law and Evidence^※. The JD is a graduate-level comprehensive legal education^※, taught in separate classes from LLB students. Compared with the four-year LLB, the two-year JD is denser in law subjects per semester, but its total tuition comes to roughly 60% of the LLB's^※ (secondary estimate, 2025). Graduates of either route may apply for the PCLL, and both must cover the same set of nine core law subjects to qualify for it. This "twin-track entry + shared PCLL exit" is the defining feature of the Faculty's curriculum design.

# 3.4 The PCLL and the Path to Practice

The Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (PCLL) is the mandatory professional training qualification for entering legal practice in Hong Kong. It was pioneered by the University of Hong Kong in 1972^※; today only three universities in Hong Kong are authorised to offer it: the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and City University of Hong Kong^※. CUHK's PCLL began in September 2008^※ at the Graduate Law Centre in Central, and is a one-year full-time programme^※ in two stages: Stage 1 consists of five compulsory core subjects (15 credits — Professional Practice, Commercial Practice, Property and Wills Practice, Civil Litigation Practice, Criminal Litigation Practice); Stage 2 requires five electives chosen from thirteen (15 credits). Entry requires an LLB/JD from one of the three law faculties, an honours degree at Second Class level, and English at IELTS (Academic) 7^※. The territory-wide PCLL admission rate is roughly 62% (2023)^※ (secondary estimate).

After the PCLL, supervised practical training is still required before admission to practice(Hong Kong Law Society / Bar Association)^※:

In rough macro terms, the LLB route to becoming a solicitor takes around 7 years (4 LLB + 1 PCLL + 2 traineeship)^※; the JD route around 5 years^※. Lawyers already qualified overseas may apply to practise in Hong Kong through the Overseas Lawyers Qualification Examination (OLQE) without redoing the PCLL.

It is worth flagging that the PCLL is the tightest bottleneck on the whole route to practice. Only three universities in the territory are authorised to offer it; places are tight relative to the output of law undergraduate and JD programmes; and the "nine core law subjects" entry precondition means that not every law graduate makes the cut — the secondary estimate of a ~62% (2023)^※ territory-wide admission rate captures exactly this competition. For the CUHK Faculty of Law, the "twin-track LLB/JD entry + shared PCLL exit" design widens the doorway into law at the front end while concentrating the competition at the single narrow gate of the PCLL. The Faculty's founding history, its four Deans and its international positioning are covered in faculties.md; the full story of its 2004 establishment appears in faculty-of-law-2004-founding.md.

# 3.5 Double Degrees and Cross-Faculty Programmes

According to the Faculty of Law, it offers double degrees with other institutions and Faculties, including:

• LLB–JD double degrees with the UK's University of Exeter and King's College London;
• a BBA–JD double degree and a JD–MBA double degree (jointly with the Faculty of Business Administration);
• a BSocSc in Diplomacy and International Studies run jointly with the Faculty of Social Science(Faculty of Law website)^※.

# 3.6 Research Centres

The Faculty of Law houses the Centre for Comparative and Transnational Law (CCTL), a Centre for Legal Innovation and Digital Society, and others(Faculty of Law website)^※.

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# 4. Interdisciplinary and Double-Major Programmes

A thread running through CUHK's programme architecture is the constant "bridge-building" between Faculties: beyond each Faculty's own majors, a large number of entry points span two or even three Faculties, so students need not run a single discipline to the end. This reflects both the inherently cross-disciplinary drift of knowledge and a practical appetite for pairing "emerging programmes × traditional degrees".

• CUHK runs cross-Faculty / interdisciplinary majors (e.g. Global Business, Quantitative Finance, Sustainability, Financial Technology, Computational Data Science — housed in their respective Faculties), as well as Double Major and Minor arrangements (credit rules in academic-system.md).
• The Faculty of Arts runs double degrees with Law and Education; Business Administration runs BBA–JD and JD–MBA with Law; Education runs teacher-training double degrees with the Science and Arts Faculties (see education-faculty-and-teacher-training.md for the teacher-training structure).
• The newer interdisciplinary programmes — Financial Technology, Applied Artificial Intelligence and the like — are themselves cross-Faculty by design, and students may stack a double major or double degree on top, creating a combination of "emerging programme × traditional degree".

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# 5. Programme Structure at a Glance

A quick-reference table: CUHK's eight-Faculty programme landscape, from undergraduate through postgraduate to legal practice, with levels and key figures.

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