Chinese University of Hong Kong

If you are applying to CUHK from the United States or anywhere outside Hong Kong, you are not using the Common App. There is no Common App essay and no set of personal-style supplements. You apply through CUHK's own Online Application System under the International Students Admissions Scheme, and the one piece of writing nearly everyone must produce is a personal statement of no more than 4000 characters explaining why you chose the programme or programmes you applied to. For most non-Medicine programmes it can run up to about two A4 pages in English; for Medicine (MBChB) you instead submit a separate 250-word personal statement.

The core challenge is restraint and focus. CUHK is a grades-and-qualifications-driven admission first: your high school diploma plus SAT or ACT and AP scores (College Board code 5690, ACT code 7050) do most of the talking, and the personal statement is the tiebreaker. American applicants who arrive with a polished, emotional 650-word Common App narrative usually write the wrong thing here. CUHK wants a programme-specific case, not a coming-of-age story. The whole document should answer one question: why this subject, at this university, and what have you already done that proves it.

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