Accounting Undergraduate Admissions

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I apply for admission to your department?  

Undergraduate students may enter the Accounting program through two routes:
JUPAS and Direct Admissions.

JUPAS

Applicants who are seeking admission on the strength of their Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE) results should apply via JUPAS.

Direct Admissions

All others, including applicants from outside Hong Kong and applicants currently enrolled in full-time or sandwich degree programs in one of the UGC-funded institutions, should apply via Direct Admissions, even if they are applying on the strength of their current and/or past HKALE results. However, in accordance with guidelines on the inter-institution transfer of students, repeating of UGC-funded study across institutions, irrespective of whether there is a change of program or discipline, is generally not considered.

Applicants from universities, polytechnics or other post-secondary institutions who have completed/are studying curricula in relevant disciplines may apply for credit transfer upon admission. However, applications for direct entry to the second year or later will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. For details, please refer to the University website on credit transfer for direct entry applicants.

For transfer students who plan to join the Qualification Programme (QP)
offered by the HKICPA, please note that the Institute requires that the
credit transfer granted to students of accredited accountancy programmes should not exceed 50% of the total credits required for the programme.

For candidates holding qualifications other than HKALE, please refer to the University guidelines for Entrance Requirement Equivalents.  Applicants who have passed accounting public examinations, such as LCCI, are not generally given preference in our admission decisions.

For further details, please refer to:

http://www.bm.ust.hk/ug/programs/admissions.html

If I am interested in Accounting, should I apply for BBA in Professional Accounting (JUPAS code 5713) or the general BBA program (JUPAS code 5701)? 

The Department of Accounting admits 100 accounting majors (under JUPAS code 5713) in year 1. Non-accounting BBA students may transfer into the accounting program in year 2 based on their academic performance in year 1 and other criteria but competition is keen. So, if you are sure you want to be an accounting major at HKUST, you should choose JUPAS codes 5713 as your 1^st choice and 5701 as your 2^nd choice. In this way, if you don’t succeed in the first try, you can apply again as a BBA student at the end of year 1.

What are the cut-off grades for securing admissions to your program?

The actual grades of the students admitted to the program varies from year to year, depending on the overall grades achieved by applicants in a particular year, the number of applicants applying to the program, changes in selection criteria, etc.

You may check the past admission grades of JUPAS applicants for reference but this information should not be used to predict the chance of admission to our program in subsequent years.

How do you calculate the scores for applicants with more than 1 sitting in HKALE?

Please refer to the information in the JUPAS guide or the JUPAS website.

Do you put more weights on certain subjects?

For HKCEE, we put double weights on English, Chinese, and Mathematics.  For HKALE, we count English with double weight.