Another Perspective on Exam Results

If you didn't get that 5.0 in your first semester, don't fret...


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"To qualify for engineering, our students usually need a minimum of two A's and one B.

Most of these students going to the U.K. will end up with a second upper, if not a first class honours. And every year, we are dealing with eight or nine hundred of them, yet only thirty or so get a first class honours, a hundred or so will get a second upper, while the majority will be second lower, and some will go into third class and so on. We thought this bell curve was very good.

One of our second lower students went to do the GRE and the TOEFL. He had an almost perfect TOEFL score and 2100 points for the GRE. When we have overseas applicants with such scores, we would offer them a post-graduate scholarship. But this is our second lower student. Are we too strict in our assessment?"

- Professor Hang Chang Chieh, Deputy Vice-Chancellor
August 1999