Common Year One and the "Second Competition": PolyU's Post-Admission Sorting Mechanism Under School-Based Admissions and a Hong Kong-Wide Comparison

When you put down a programme choice on your JUPAS form, at PolyU that choice no longer directly determines the degree you will hold four years later. The one-line conclusion: Starting from the 2025/26 academic year, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has reorganised the bulk of its undergraduate intake into seven "Bachelor's Degree Schemes." Applicants are admitted only into a broad disciplinary category, not a specific major. They must first complete a "Common Year One," and at year's end compete for their major via a three-dimensional ranking assessment combining their Entrance Qualification Score, Year One GPA, and interview performance. Admission is just the entry ticket—securing your desired major is a second competition that unfolds after enrolment.

This article focuses on the latter half of this "admit first, sort into majors later" mechanism: what Common Year One entails, how the year-end ranking determines academic fate, what the seventh "Self-Designed Major" scheme is all about, and how PolyU's approach compares with other institutions across Hong Kong's eight UGC-funded universities. The specific majors contained within the six main schemes, their quotas, and application strategies are covered in the companion piece School-Based Admissions and "Faculty-Based" Entry and will not be repeated here. For JUPAS entry requirements and admission scores for stand-alone programmes, see PolyU Undergraduate Admissions Overview. Data is based on official information for the 2026 intake / 2025/26 academic year, last consolidated in July 2026.

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# When Did PolyU's School-Based Admissions Take Shape? How Many Schemes Are There Now?

PolyU's school-based admissions approach has not always been in place. According to a Ming Pao Education report, PolyU "starting from the 2025/26 academic year" introduced and uniformly implemented Bachelor's Degree Schemes^※, a significant shift from its previous practice of admitting students under specific programme titles to broad disciplinary categories. PolyU officially describes this arrangement on its programme pages as a "new initiative designed to help students align their studies with their passions"^※, positioned to give students time and flexibility to "explore a discipline and navigate their academic interests."

A frequently overlooked fact: PolyU currently runs seven, not six, Bachelor's Degree Schemes. According to the official PolyU Bachelor's Degree Scheme page, there are seven schemes^※. In addition to the six faculty/discipline-based schemes (Engineering; Construction and Environment; Business Administration; Computer and Mathematical Sciences; Science; Humanities), there is a separate scheme standing apart from the faculties: the Bachelor's Degree Scheme in Interdisciplinary Studies (JS3000). The six schemes examined in the companion piece follow a path of "sorting within a faculty," whereas JS3000 operates by "designing one's own major across faculties," with a mechanism all its own (see dedicated section below).

The table below lays out all seven schemes with their JS codes and the nature of their sorting, to make the landscape easier to grasp (the list of selectable majors within each scheme is in the companion piece and omitted here):

Note: Except for JS3000, major selection within the six schemes takes place within the scope of a single faculty, via competitive year-end ranking assessment. JS3000 uses a "structured framework plus tutorial system" allowing students to custom-design a major across faculties, and does not enter the regular intra-scheme ranking competition.

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# Why Did PolyU Switch to School-Based Admissions? What Were the Driving Forces?

Transforming the entire undergraduate admissions system to a school-based model was not an isolated administrative tweak but a response to two converging imperatives. The first is the reality on the industry side. According to Ming Pao Education, relaying PolyU's implementation context, "innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and robotics are increasingly integrated into various industries,"^※ blurring the boundaries between single disciplines and making flexible, cross-disciplinary learning appear necessary. When an engineering student is likely to engage with data analytics and AI in their future career, locking them into a narrow specialism chosen on the day of admission becomes counterproductive.

The second is the educational philosophy of "deferred decision-making" itself. A seventeen- or eighteen-year-old HKDSE candidate, filling out their JUPAS form, may not truly know what suits them at that moment. By shifting the "major declaration" point from "upon admission" to "after completing one year," PolyU's official rationale is precisely to give students the time and flexibility to "explore a discipline and navigate their academic interests."^※ This "broad-based entry, deferred sorting" approach is not unique to PolyU in Hong Kong—it is a direction several universities have taken over the past decade or so (as the comparison below shows). PolyU's distinctive feature is applying it across seven broad disciplinary categories in one sweep, making its scale among the more systematic in the sector.

Grasping this driving force helps in understanding the essential trade-off of school-based admissions: it trades the pressure of a premature specialism choice at seventeen for a "post-entry re-competition." This flexibility is a gift for students who are uncommitted, but for those with clear goals who simply want a direct route to a specific narrow programme, it can represent an additional hurdle.

# What Exactly Does "Common Year One" Entail? How Is It Different from a Regular First Year?

Common Year One is the institutional foundation of PolyU's school-based admissions. According to the official PolyU description, all students admitted under the same scheme, along with students from departmental programmes, take a "Common Year One" curriculum together^※. Its content includes the University's General University Requirement (GUR) subjects and foundational subjects tailored to the disciplinary area. The official design intent behind these foundational subjects is to cater to students from diverse backgrounds, giving them a "solid foundation to explore a range of disciplines."

Its difference from a regular first year, where students are streamed into specific departments upon arrival, lies in the generality of the foundational subjects. A traditional programme's Year One courses are often directly aligned with a specific profession (e.g., a Nursing Year One covers nursing specialisms). The Common Year One of a scheme is deliberately designed to be "broad," allowing an undeclared student to encounter introductory content from multiple directions within the same group over the year, before orienting themselves based on interest and performance. The PolyU Faculty of Science states the credit requirements for the entire four-year degree as "at least 120 academic credits plus training credits"^※, with Common Year One forming the foundational first layer of these 120 credits.

A practical implication worth noting for applicants: Common Year One grades are not a transitional "read-for-fun" period; they directly contribute to the year-end ranking for major selection (see the next section). In other words, every single course GPA in Year One is accumulating points towards "whether you can get your desired major"—a pressure timeline quite distinct from systems where "Year One is a relaxed year, Year Two is when things get serious."

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# How Is Major Allocation Decided at Year's End? A Three-Dimensional Breakdown of the Ranking Assessment

The actual "sorting valve" of the Bachelor's Degree Schemes opens near the end of the first year. According to the official PolyU Faculty of Science page, near the end of Year One, students select their desired programmes through a "ranking assessment" that synthesises three components: their Entrance Qualification Score, Year One GPA, and interview performance^※. The same mechanism applies across all six faculty-based schemes. The nature of these three dimensions is as follows:

Of the three dimensions, only one (the Entrance Qualification Score) is "locked in on the day of admission"; the other two are only generated during Year One. This determines a core characteristic of PolyU's school-based system: a lower admission score does not equate to being shut out of popular majors. A student admitted with a mid-range score who achieves a high Year One GPA can, in theory, overtake in the ranking assessment a classmate with a higher admission score who slacks off during the first year. Conversely, a student with a stellar admission score who underperforms in their Year One GPA may lose out on a popular major. This is a competition that breaks "one exam determines everything" into two stages: "admission + Year One."

A point must be made explicit: the ranking assessment is competitive, not a process where "applying guarantees a place." Popular majors have limited quotas. When the number of applicants for a major exceeds its capacity, selection is made on merit according to the ranking described above, with those at the bottom being sorted into other majors that still have vacancies. PolyU does not officially publish the internal sorting data for each major (the application-to-quota ratio), so there are no official figures to check on "which major is the hardest to get." Students can only make their own judgement based on the public popularity of a given field. Take the Engineering Scheme (JS3005) as an example: the popularity gap among the 16 majors within the same scheme is considerable, and the internal competition for an AI-related direction is on a completely different level from that of some traditionally less sought-after options.

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To make the operation of this ranking more concrete, consider a purely illustrative scenario (the following individuals and numbers are for explanatory purposes only, not real cases). Assume two students, A and B, are in the Engineering Scheme. Student A has a higher Entrance Qualification Score, but earns only a middling GPA in Common Year One. Student B has a slightly lower admission score, yet strives for excellence in every Year One subject, achieving a top-tier GPA. When both list "Artificial Intelligence and Information Engineering" as their first choice and the quota is tight, the ranking assessment will combine both students' Entrance Qualification Score and Year One GPA (plus any applicable interview score)—Student B, buoyed by a strong Year One performance, might well overtake Student A in the composite ranking, securing the popular major first, while Student A is deferred to another direction within the scheme that still has places. This scenario illustrates the mechanism's key point: the admission score is the starting line, not the finish line.

It must be stressed that this is merely an illustration of the mechanism. PolyU does not officially publish the application-to-quota ratios for individual majors, nor the exact weighting of the three dimensions in the composite ranking. There is thus no publicly verifiable official formula for "how much GPA is needed to compensate for how large an admission score gap." Students cannot perform precise calculations; treating "doing one's best in Year One" as a prudent strategy is the only available course.

# Does This Apply to Non-JUPAS and International Students Too? Are They Subject to the Same Ranking Assessment?

School-based admissions are not exclusive to local JUPAS applicants. According to the JUPAS catalogue, the 30 first-year places for PolyU's JS3000 are stated as "combined figures for JUPAS and non-JUPAS applicants,"^※ indicating that the same scheme entry simultaneously opens to local DSE candidates and non-JUPAS/international applicants. Students entering a Bachelor's Degree Scheme via international and other qualification pathways enter the same broad disciplinary category as JUPAS students, take the same Common Year One curriculum, and are in principle also required to compete for their major through the year-end ranking assessment—the difference is that their "Entrance Qualification Score" is derived by converting qualifications such as the IB, GCE A-Levels, or the mainland Chinese gaokao, rather than being a weighted HKDSE score.

This raises a fairness design question that is frequently overlooked: how the "Entrance Qualification Score" from different academic systems is made commensurable on a single ranking table is not disclosed by PolyU in any detail. For international students, the more actionable takeaway aligns with that for local students—since the Year One GPA is the sole dimension that "can still be changed after enrolment," performing solidly in Common Year One is the shared currency for navigating the uncertainties of qualification conversion. For basic entry thresholds and English language requirements for non-JUPAS/international applicants, see Section 2 of the PolyU Undergraduate Admissions Overview; they are not repeated here.

# The Seventh Scheme, JS3000: How Does Letting Top Students "Design Their Own Major" Work?

In addition to the six faculty-based schemes, from 2025/26 PolyU has introduced an entry route of a fundamentally different nature: the Bachelor's Degree Scheme in Interdisciplinary Studies (JS3000). This is not about "choosing a major within a faculty"; it permits students to traverse existing faculty and disciplinary boundaries and assemble a major for themselves.

According to the JUPAS catalogue page for JS3000, the programme admits 30 students in its first year (JUPAS and non-JUPAS combined), explicitly stating it is "designed for high-calibre students, including those enrolled in the MPP programme,"^※ and emphasises personalised guidance and an intensive tutorial system. According to the official PolyU JS3000 programme page, its credit structure consists of three blocks: 18 credits of "Interdisciplinary Core Subjects," a minimum of 54 credits for a "Self-Designed Major," and a minimum of 36 credits of "University Core Curriculum."^※ In other words, the largest block—those 54 credits—is custom-designed by the student within a structured framework, without having to conform to existing university faculties or disciplinary groupings.

The entry threshold for JS3000 is also distinct. According to the JUPAS catalogue, the HKDSE entry requirement for JS3000 is "a best-5 score of 34.5 or above," with Level 3 in Chinese and English, Level 2 in Compulsory Mathematics, Attained in Citizenship and Social Development, plus Level 3 in any two other subjects (or Level 3 in one subject plus a Mathematics Extended Module)^※. Moreover, the "flexible admissions" consideration applicable to other PolyU programmes does not apply to JS3000. This clear score line sets it apart from the other six schemes, for which no separate weighted admission scores are published—JS3000 looks more like an elite track laid down for high-flyers than a universal broad-entry gateway.

To clarify the nature of all seven schemes in one sentence: the six faculty-based schemes are "enter a faculty, compete for a major within it at year's end"; JS3000 is "enter a cross-faculty elite programme, design your own major within a framework." The former is a competition of rank; the latter has a high entry bar, very few places (30), and emphasises autonomy and a tutorial system.

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# Placed Among Hong Kong's Eight UGC-Funded Universities: Is PolyU's Path the Same as Others?

"Broad-based admissions, with major selection after entry" is not an invention of PolyU; several UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong have similar arrangements. However, setting them side-by-side reveals that while the terms "broad-based" or "school-based" are used, the internal rules for choosing a major split into two opposing philosophies: one where "you are guaranteed your choice," the other where "you must compete again." PolyU belongs to the latter camp.

CUHK's Faculty of Science represents the "guarantee" route. According to the official CUHK Faculty of Science page, its "SCIENCE Broad-based Admission Scheme (JS4601)" allows students to explore 11 Science majors in Year One before declaring their major, and "there is no quota for a specific major, and students are guaranteed admission to their programme of choice."^※ In other words, provided a student progresses normally, they can read whichever Science major they wish, without competing with peers for places. This is a fundamentally different design from PolyU's ranking assessment: CUHK Science treats the "broad base" as an exploration period, ultimately returning the choice to the student; PolyU treats the "broad base" as a competitive pool, with allocation ultimately determined by ranking.

HKUST and PolyU share the "competitive" approach. According to the official HKUST School of Engineering page, the School adopts "School-based Admission," where students must undergo major selection, and popular fields have limited quotas^※—the page explicitly notes that entry into the Department of Computer Science and Engineering or the Computer Engineering programme, "while possible, is subject to competition due to a tight quota." This logic closely mirrors PolyU's "popular majors select on merit via ranking, with the rest sorted elsewhere": neither university guarantees entry into the most popular majors.

The table below juxtaposes several typical broad-based/faculty-based admissions models (all based on official information from around the 2025/26 period for each institution, comparing only the institutional nature of the systems, not admission scores):

Institutional implication: While ostensibly the same "enter a broad category, choose a major later" model, PolyU and HKUST leave the risk with the student during Year One—admission is a qualification, but the major must be fought for again based on Year One performance. The CUHK Faculty of Science gives certainty to the student—entry is tantamount to getting the choice. Applicants aiming for a popular major at PolyU must understand that they face a "two-stage competition," not a case of "entry equals touchdown."

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# What Does This Mean for JUPAS Programme Selection Strategy?

Translating the above mechanism into actionable application steps, the strategic implications of PolyU's school-based admissions focus on three points, all complementing the discussion in the companion piece on "Scheme vs. Stand-Alone Programme: How to Choose"—that piece dealt with choice of entry point, while this one addresses post-entry navigation.

First, do not slack off in Year One. Since the Year One GPA is one of the three dimensions of the ranking assessment, and the only variable "that can still be changed after entry," treating Common Year One as a transition period to coast through is tantamount to voluntarily forfeiting your chance to turn the tables. For students whose admission score sits mid-range within a scheme but who have their heart set on a popular major, their Year One GPA is practically their only lever for an upset victory.

Second, have a Plan B if your major bid fails. Competitive sorting means "entering a scheme does not equal entering your desired major." A rational applicant should find out in advance: if their ranking is insufficient for their first-choice major, what other directions remain within the same scheme, and would they be acceptable if sorted there? It is more prudent to think through "what is the worst-case major I could end up with" before applying to the scheme, rather than focusing solely on the most popular option.

Third, top performers can take the separate JS3000 route. If an applicant's HKDSE results can confidently achieve a best-5 score of 34.5 or above, and they lean towards a self-directed, cross-disciplinary path, JS3000 offers an elite channel that bypasses the "intra-scheme ranking battle"—the trade-off being a mere 30 places, equally intense competition, and no fallback flexibility since the flexible admissions policy does not apply, leaving no leeway around the hard score threshold.

As for which scoring subjects to weight, how to align weighting towards a scheme rather than a sub-major, and the role of banding in the selection process, these are entry-level strategies already detailed in School-Based Admissions and "Faculty-Based" Entry and are not repeated here.

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# School-Based Admissions · Quick Reference for Common Questions

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# See Also

• School-Based Admissions and "Faculty-Based" Entry — Which selectable majors are included in the six schemes, quotas, flexible admissions thresholds, and strategies for choosing between a "Scheme JS Code" and a "Stand-Alone Programme JS Code" (entry-level).
• PolyU Undergraduate Admissions Overview — JUPAS basic entry requirements, 8.5-point system conversion, subject-specific admission scores for stand-alone programmes, and Non-JUPAS / International / JEE admissions.
• PolyU Tuition Fees and Scholarships Overview — Local/Non-local tuition fees and the entry scholarship system.