How Do Mainland Students Get Into HKU? — The Mainland Undergraduate Admissions Scheme, the Chase for Top Scorers, and What Self-Funded Tuition Actually Costs

The application fee is HK$600, non-refundable once paid; yet the official website carries no single, published gaokao cut-off score. That is the first paradox the Mainland NJCEE (Gao Kao) Admissions Scheme presents to every applicant — the entry bar is written in deliberately elastic terms, while the tuition bill is spelled out to the last dollar.

One-line summary: for the 2026 intake, The University of Hong Kong (HKU)'s Mainland NJCEE (Gao Kao) Admissions Scheme sets no quota across all 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and admits on merit^※, with no published official cut-off score — but for the 2026/27 academic year, self-funded tuition for non-local undergraduates has risen to HK$224,000 a year for non-STEM faculties and HK$249,000 a year for STEM/medicine and dentistry faculties^※ — nearly five times what local students pay.

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# Which route do mainland students actually apply through?

The answer: neither through the mainland's unified admissions system nor through the international-student system, but a separate third channel independent of both. According to HKU Admissions' mainland gaokao page^※, applicants holding results from the mainland gaokao (the NJCEE, or National Joint College Entrance Examination, commonly known as the gaokao) must apply directly on HKU's mainland admissions website. Officially, this route is called the Mainland NJCEE (Gao Kao) Admissions Scheme. It runs alongside, but entirely separate from, the two other entry points: JUPAS (the Joint University Programmes Admissions System), used by local HKDSE candidates, and the Non-JUPAS international-student system, used by applicants with IB, A-Level or other international qualifications. The site's own Complete Guide to HKU's DSE Entry Requirements and JUPAS Applications has already covered those first two routes in detail; this article focuses solely on the mainland one.

According to the 2026 admissions brochure^※, "for the 2026 intake, HKU's Mainland NJCEE (Gao Kao) Admissions Scheme recruits from all 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions nationwide, with no quota set for any individual province or municipality, and admission is on merit." That statement carries two distinct implications. First, applying to HKU does not use up a place in a mainland province's "early batch" (提前批) application track — the two systems run independently of each other. Second, HKU does not pre-set a fixed number of places for any given province — in principle, if a province's applicant pool is unusually strong in a given year, the number admitted from that province could exceed any previous year's figure. The brochure also notes^※ that "applying to HKU does not affect participation in mainland unified admissions, and applicants may simultaneously apply to other university admissions schemes (such as the Qiangji Jihua, or 'Strong Foundation Plan')" — in other words, applying to HKU is not an all-or-nothing bet; candidates can hedge on both sides.

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# When did this separate admissions channel start?

It did not exist from the outset, and it did not arrive in one step. According to a review by The Paper marking 40 years since the gaokao's restoration^※, in 1998 Hong Kong institutions recruited mainland students under an "outsourced recruitment" model: students first had to gain admission to one of ten mainland universities — including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University and Sun Yat-sen University — before being selected for transfer to Hong Kong. Each institution took in only 10 to 30 students a year, a small scale, and HKU had no direct hand in the recruitment itself.

The real turning point came in 2003. According to the same feature^※, "in 2003, the Ministry of Education formally approved Hong Kong institutions recruiting self-funded undergraduates directly in six provinces and municipalities — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian." This was the first time HKU could bypass mainland universities and recruit candidates directly. The scheme's geographic reach then expanded year on year: to 10 provinces in 2004, 17 in 2005, and 20 in 2006 — quadrupling in three years. Enrolment scale grew in step: according to the same report^※, Hong Kong institutions admitted about 1,400 mainland students in 2007, held steady at around 1,600 a year in 2012–2013, and passed 1,500 in 2014 — roughly a sixfold increase over a decade. Today's wording on the official website — "all 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, no quota set" — is the end point of that two-decade expansion, not its starting point.

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# What is HKU's actual gaokao score threshold?

No single official cut-off score has been published — this is the point most often misunderstood when examining this scheme. Working through the 2026 admissions brochure and HKU's mainland admissions website in full, the stated admissions criteria consist only of three qualitative descriptions^※: "priority given to applicants' overall gaokao score and English result," "overall performance in the interview," and "overall academic and non-academic qualities" — none of them accompanied by a specific number. The site's own Complete Guide to HKU's DSE Entry Requirements and JUPAS Applications, when it previously checked the English-subject threshold for mainland admissions, reached the same conclusion, flagged there as "no unified public threshold found."

Specific cut-off figures do circulate — but they come from study-abroad consultancies' own estimates, not from any HKU publication, and they contradict each other. One consultancy's report states that HKU's mainland admissions "require a total gaokao score more than 150 points above the Tier-1 line"; another consultancy's analysis gives a different figure: "an initial screening benchmark of 130 points above the Tier-1 line (for provinces on the 750-point scale), with a minimum gaokao English score of 130 out of 150." The two figures differ by 20 points, and neither can be traced back to anything HKU itself has published. This article does not adopt either specific number — it reports only the fact itself: consultancies produce estimates, and those estimates disagree. One official detail can be confirmed: gaokao candidates applying to HKU need only submit their gaokao English result, with no separate IELTS or TOEFL score required^※ — unlike international-student applicants, who must submit an independent English-test score. This is a convenience specific to the mainland gaokao route.

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# How much does the application cost, what are the steps, and what does the interview cover?

A timeline lays out the whole process from opening to results. According to the 2026 admissions brochure^※:

The application process itself is not complicated, but every step costs money, and none of it is refundable: once the online application form is completed, an application fee of HK$600 is payable^※, and "once the application fee has been paid, it will not be refunded under any circumstances." After gaokao results are released, candidates must log in and upload their own scores; HKU does not draw scores directly from mainland examination authorities. Applicants who meet the criteria are invited to interview, and the interview is conducted entirely in English^※ — for most mainland candidates, this is often the single most unfamiliar part of the whole process: it is neither a written exam nor the kind of independent-admissions interview format common on the mainland, but a holistic assessment that has to be handled entirely in English.

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# What is the "Multi-faceted Excellence Admissions Scheme," and how does it differ from a standard application?

A standard application is decided in a single sitting; the Multi-faceted Excellence Admissions Scheme is HKU's pre-screening channel that opens before gaokao results are even released. According to the admissions brochure^※, applicants meeting any of the following may be considered for admission incentives: consistently strong academic performance; competition awards or subject-specific strengths, such as Olympiad results, national-, provincial- or municipal-level subject competitions, English or writing competitions, or invention patents; extensive extracurricular activity, such as volunteering, study tours, or Model United Nations; demonstrated leadership, such as leading a student society or serving as an outstanding student officer; and notable talent in the arts or sports.

Procedurally, applicants must first complete standard registration under the Mainland NJCEE (Gao Kao) Admissions Scheme and obtain an application number before they can proceed with a Multi-faceted Excellence application. HKU reviews the submitted materials and invites qualifying candidates to an online interview^※. Strong performers can receive bonus consideration at the point of undergraduate admission, and exceptionally strong performers may even receive a conditional offer before gaokao results are released. This channel also connects to several specific joint programmes — for instance, the Faculty of Engineering's "HKU–Cambridge Undergraduate Admissions Scheme," the Faculty of Science's "Undergraduate Research Fellowship Programme," and joint dual-degree programmes HKU runs with the University of California, Berkeley, Sciences Po, and the University of British Columbia. In effect, the Multi-faceted Excellence Scheme gives an applicant a chance to knock on several doors at once.

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# How much is self-funded tuition per year, and how much more is it than what local students pay?

Tuition is one of the few figures in this admissions route stated down to the exact dollar. According to HKU Admissions' published fee schedule^※, 2026/27 tuition splits into two tiers by faculty:

Annual tuition for non-local students is 4.8 to 5.3 times that of local students. Over a four-year degree, total tuition alone comes to roughly HK$896,000 for non-STEM disciplines and roughly HK$996,000 for STEM/medicine and dentistry disciplines — before adding accommodation and living expenses of roughly HK$70,000 to HK$100,000 a year^※. These figures are not static: according to an early-2026 Tencent News report^※, HKU's 2026/27 non-STEM tuition rose by about 13.1% and STEM tuition by about 14.2%; in the same academic year, HKU's total 2024/25 income from tuition and course fees came to roughly HK$6.75 billion, up more than 19% year on year — the tuition increases and HKU's overall revenue growth sit on the same timeline.

The good news is that top applicants do not necessarily pay in full. According to the admissions brochure^※, "HKU offers generous entrance scholarships to reward mainland students on the admissions list who show outstanding academic results and overall qualities," and "entrance scholarships require no separate application — every applicant who successfully registers with HKU is automatically considered." The highest awards can cover the full cost of tuition and living expenses for the duration of study. But scholarships are ultimately reserved for the subset of admitted students with "outstanding academic results and overall qualities"; for the majority of ordinary self-funded students, the rising sticker price remains a real, additional cost.

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# Are top scorers really competing to get into HKU?

It depends on the year. "The chase for top scorers" is a narrative label that recurs across media coverage, but placing reports from different years side by side reveals a curve with peaks and troughs, not a line that only rises.

Interestingly, the first peak on that curve was a case of "HKU choosing students" rather than "top scorers choosing HKU." According to a review by The Paper^※, in 2005 HKU received a large number of mainland applications and "turned down 11 zhuangyuan — provincial top gaokao scorers — from nine provinces and municipalities"; that year's admission rate was "roughly one admitted for every 41 applicants." The then Vice-Chancellor, explaining the admissions standard, stressed that HKU valued "a student's character, experience and academic ability" over test scores alone — which corroborates this article's earlier finding that HKU has no official cut-off score: even as far back as 2005, HKU's selection logic was never a simple matter of ranking by score.

2011 is the other high point widely recognised in media narratives — this time with the roles reversed, as top scorers competed to get into HKU. According to a 2011 CCTV.com report^※, "HKU admitted 291 mainland students this year, including 17 provincial- and municipal-level gaokao zhuangyuan from 17 provinces and municipalities, among them three Beijing arts-stream top scorers." The same report states that each admitted top scorer that year received a scholarship of HK$160,000. The year is widely regarded as a landmark moment for the "Hong Kong university craze" (港校热) — the province-level top gaokao scorers from more than a dozen provinces turning south to Hong Kong in the same year.

But the surge did not continue in a straight line. According to a review by The Paper^※, in 2013 Liu Dingning (刘丁宁), the arts-stream zhuangyuan of Liaoning Province, was admitted to HKU on a full scholarship, but withdrew about a month after enrolling and returned to the mainland to retake the gaokao; in 2014, she was admitted to Peking University's Chinese-language department, again as Liaoning's arts-stream top scorer. Liu's own explanation was that she was "not accustomed to Hong Kong's educational approach and cultural atmosphere." The same report cites former HKU Vice-Chancellor Lap-Chee Tsui (徐立之) as saying that some mainland students "cannot adjust immediately" to the "considerable change" in their study and living environment. This case has since become the most frequently cited example of "top scorers turning away from Hong Kong back to the mainland." Credibility: corroborated by multiple sources — several outlets independently reported the core facts of the same event, though the stated psychological reasoning remains each side's own account, presented here side by side without a ruling on which is correct.

2014 in Yunnan offers another, more direct signal — and this time two Hong Kong institutions were turned down at once. According to a Science Net report^※, HKU had recruited in Yunnan since 2006, and "in the seven years to 2012, Yunnan's top scorer chose HKU in six of those years, the exception being 2010." But 2013 saw the "first cold spell" — two top scorers appeared at interview but ultimately neither chose HKU. By 2014, Yunnan's arts- and science-stream top scorers, Zhao Haoyu (赵浩宇) and Zhou Quan (周权), "both turned down HKU for Tsinghua," and "did not even show up for interview." That same year, a report by The Paper^※ filled in another detail: Zhou Quan also turned down a HK$660,000 scholarship offered by CUHK — two Hong Kong institutions' offers declined by the same top scorer in the same year, not an isolated case but two facets of the same cooling trend. Science Net's report suggested that as mainland universities became more internationalised and study-abroad channels diversified, "Hong Kong's role as a stepping stone is no longer as pronounced" — one specific facet of how the "chase for top scorers" narrative shifted from boom to cooling over a decade or so, presented here by the year each report was published, without further judgement.

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# The 2020s: applications have surged — does that make it easier to get in?

More than a decade on, "top scorers" are no longer this route's main talking point; application volume and the intensity of competition have taken their place as the new focus of attention. According to an SCMP report^※, HKU admitted more than 1,200 non-local first-year students for the 2024–25 academic year, an increase of about 50% on the previous year, roughly half of them from mainland China. According to HKU's own Quick Stats^※, in the 2025/26 academic year mainland undergraduates on campus numbered 4,397, and mainland students together with other non-local students made up 33.4% of the undergraduate total (6,709 of 20,103) — with mainland students accounting for 65.5% of all non-local undergraduates. A separate study-abroad consultancy's figures for the same academic year broadly corroborate this picture: according to a compilation by SFK Education^※, roughly 4,860 undergraduates entered HKU in 2024/25, of whom 33.9% were non-local, and mainland students accounted for 86.3% of all non-local students — a modest percentage-point difference from the official figures, best read as one further data point corroborating the overall picture rather than a contradiction of it.

Another facet of the competition's intensity comes from a consultancy's compiled figures for the autumn 2025 intake. According to a compilation by landwave^※, total non-local undergraduate applications to HKU in 2025 exceeded 25,000, of which mainland applicants numbered more than 21,000 — 84% of all non-local applications; the overall admission rate for mainland applicants was said to be about 4%, or "roughly one admitted for every 24 mainland applicants," with 91% of those admitted coming from the top 1% of their province. This figure is relayed from a consultancy rather than drawn from HKU's own published data; this article flags it as credibility: single source, for reference only, not treated as a settled conclusion. The same report states that a person described as an HKU admissions and international-exchange official told the outlet that the university plans to shift the ratio of mainland to international students from roughly 6:4 at present toward 1:1 over time, with international quotas set to expand further — if accurate, this would mean the structural quota squeeze facing mainland applicants tightens further going forward. The original interview behind this attributed remark has not been independently confirmed; it is presented here only as relayed by that report.

Tying this curve back to the tuition and policy framework: the cap on non-local undergraduate places has jumped from 20% to 40% within two years (see the site's own Numbers and Policy). Admitted numbers are growing, but the applicant pool is growing faster still — dividing one by the other produces the paradox of "a larger total intake alongside a lower admission rate." This is consistent with what the site has already established elsewhere, and it is the layer most easily overlooked in the official phrase "the scheme sets no quota": no quota cap does not mean no competitive ceiling.

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# Frequently asked questions

Does "no quota set by province" mean HKU admits however many students from my province apply? No. "No quota set" means HKU does not pre-divide a fixed provincial allocation — in principle, if a province's applicant pool is unusually strong in a given year, the number admitted could exceed previous years'; but this does not mean "no threshold at all" — admission is still assessed on the combination of overall gaokao score, English result, interview performance, and overall qualities^※, and consultancy estimates put the overall 2025 mainland admission rate at only about 4% (single source; see the section above for context).

Does no official cut-off score mean a candidate with a low, unprepared score still has a chance? Also no. No unified cut-off score does not mean no real threshold — admission still gives priority to overall gaokao score and English result. The "130 to 150 points above the Tier-1 line" range put forward by various consultancies is inconsistent between sources, but all versions point to the same consensus: a score "well above the ordinary undergraduate admission line." This article does not adopt either specific figure, but that is not the same as saying there is no real high-score requirement.

Do mainland applicants need to sit IELTS or TOEFL separately? No. Gaokao candidates need only submit their gaokao English-subject result^※, with no separate international English-test score required — a procedural convenience specific to the mainland gaokao route, distinct from the Non-JUPAS international-student system, which typically requires a separate English-test score.

Is the "chase for top scorers" still as intense today? Going by media coverage, the shape of the competition has changed: around 2011, HKU and top mainland universities competed directly for individual top scorers; 2013–2014 saw a cooling period. From the 2020s onward, as the non-local quota cap has risen and the applicant pool has expanded, the competition has shifted from "competing for individual top scorers" to a broader decline in the overall admission rate as tens of thousands compete for a few hundred places. Where this trend goes next is left to future years' official data; this article does not forecast it.

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# Further reading

• Numbers and Policy — Non-Local Expansion, the "Mainlandisation" of Postgraduate Programmes, and the Two-System Education Landscape
• The "Mainlandisation" of the Graduate School — How the Mainland Share of HKU's Taught and Research Postgraduates Has Shifted
• Mainland Students at HKU — Community, Tension, and Two-System Perspectives
• Complete Guide to HKU's DSE Entry Requirements and JUPAS Applications
• HKU Postgraduate Scholarships and Undergraduate Tuition at a Glance

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