DSE grads face race to make up minds on offers

The Vocational Training Council is reminding students who sat for university entrance examinations to check the status of their offers and submit their acceptances by 4 pm on Wednesday.

That is the day the results of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams are set to be released, setting off a potential scramble by the almost 59,000 candidates this year for roughly 15,000 publicly funded university places.

The Vocational Training Council (VTC) is offering 140 full-time programmes – ranging from bachelor's degrees to higher diplomas and diplomas of vocational education – as alternative pathways for 13,000 DSE graduates.

“We advise our applicants to go to our website after checking their DSE results to check whether the offer has been confirmed,” said the VTC’s senior assistant executive director Jerry Kwok.

“Remember to accept the offer on the day before 4 pm. I think this is very important. Otherwise, their place will be cancelled.”

Kwok also listed some of the popular programmes that face stiffer competition.

“For example, there are some programmes in aviation and logistics that are very popular," he said.

"Also, we have mega events in Hong Kong, and we observe that some applicants are interested in the sport and mega-event-related higher diploma.

"And lastly, we also have some students looking for rehabilitation and social work-related programmes.”

Joseph Tsang, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Careers Masters and Guidance Masters and vice-principal of Ying Wa College, advised students and parents to plan ahead for results day.

“Students can make use of these [coming] days to do their final preparation by looking at their performance in the DSE and then make three plans,” he said.

“One plan would be about what choices they would make according to normal performance.”

“[They should also] make two more plans.

"One would be when they have much better results, what changes would they make.

"[The other is] what contingency plans they would adopt if they have a DSE result that is not as good as their expectations.”

Tsang urged parents and teachers to avoid putting pressure on students should they miss their targets, and to give them room to reflect and make their own study choices.

Edited by Robert Kemp ...