Course Registration FAQ

Normally you should follow the recommended study pathway for required courses. Deviations may delay your graduation due to prerequisite and course offering constraints. However, you may deviate from the elective recommendations by seeking an advice from your COMP 4900 academic advisor and/or the UG advising team.

The recommended email request format is as follows:

Subject: Request to have a deviation from the recommended study pathway

Content:
Name:
Year of Study:

Attachment: The latest unofficial transcript and your deviated study plan

Requests deviated from the above format may not be entertained.

You also need to check the UG Curriculum at the Undergraduate Programs for the course requirements of your program.

Cases like these may require deviating from the recommended study pathway. Since a customized study pathway is needed, the current ARO system cannot pre-register you in required courses that you take in semesters different from the recommended ones. Please feel free to discuss with your COMP 4900 academic advisor and/or the UG advising team if you need help in customizing your study pathway.

The department helps you to pre-register a few fundamental core courses. We usually don't recommend student to drop these courses since it may lead to defer of graduation. If you have carefully considered your study pathway and decided to drop the course, please raise such request in SIS. You may be asked to contact our academic counselor to further discuss this before approval. Please note once the drop request is granted, the department won't help you to pre-register that particular course in the future.

The curriculum published in the Academic Calendar of the year you entered your current Computer Science program is the one that you should follow. However, some subsequent curriculum changes may also lead to slight changes in the existing curriculum and recommended study pathway. Such changes are announced to all students concerned as soon as they are approved by the University. Please check the UG Curriculum at the Undergraduate Programs.

In each semester, the suggested credit load is 15 credits. The ARR allows students to take up to 18 credits. If you would like to take more than 18 credits, you MUST seek an explicit approval.

Method 1: We offer a simplified approval process subject to the following conditions:

• Year 2 students
  • If your CGA is A- (i.e., 3.7) or above, you can take a maximum of 20 credits.
  • If your CGA is C (i.e., 2.0) or above, you can take a maximum of 19 credits.
• Year 3 or 4 students
  • If your CGA is A- (i.e., 3.7) or above, you can take a maximum of 22 credits.
  • If your CGA is C (i.e., 2.0) or above, you can take a maximum of 20 credits.

We apply stricter rules for Year 2 students in the simplified approval process because they are relatively new to their declared major.

The approval request can be submitted on SIS as follows ("Class Enroll Approval Request" -> "Add Course Approval Request"):

Method 2: If you would like to overload more credits than the conditions stated in Method 1, please discuss with your COMP 4900 academic advisor and/or the UG advising team for the approval. You should seek an advice well in advance before the course registration because your advisor may be out of town during your course registration.

The conversion table from course grade to points is attached for your reference:

A student on academic probation / unsatisfactory academic performance is subject to a REDUCED study load as follows unless otherwise advised by the academic advisor of the student:

• Not more than 9 credits for a student on academic probation with TGA < 1.0;
• Not more than 12 credits for a student on academic probation with TGA ≥ 1.0; and
• Not more than 12 credits for a student on academic warnings (but not academic probation) with TGA < 1.0; and
• Not more than 15 credits for a student on academic warnings (but not academic probation and TGA ≥ 1.0) with (CGA + TGA) < 3.4.

From time to time, ARR, upon recommendation of departments, add 'special quota' during the add/drop period for cases without which the graduation or academic progress of students will be seriously hampered. However, as a standard practice, quotas will not be added for specific students to take their preferred ELECTIVES.

The following are some of the categories of cases that ARO has accepted upon the recommendation of course/major departments.

• Dual program – students who have declared dual program designation.
• Minor program – students who have declared minor program will need assistance to enroll for minor program courses to complete the program requirements.
• Course re-take – students who need to re-take failed courses, mostly required courses.
• Program transfer – students who have transferred between programs may have difficulties in getting into required courses of the new program.
• Required courses – students who cannot meet the course pre-requisite requirements and failed to be pre-registered to required courses.
• Exchange program – exchange-in students may need certain course places to fulfill degree requirements of their home institutions.
• Medical reasons – some students may have medical problems that affect their choice of courses or class time.
• Canceled courses/classes – students who are affected by the department's decision to cancel a course/class after their enrollment is confirmed.
• Student project – subject to the support of course instructor and project supervisor (and sometimes major department), class quota may be added for some students who need to take a specific course which directly equip themselves for completion of final year project.

It should be emphasized that these are not rules for deviation from the waitlisting system, rather they are precedent cases that we have come across in the past few years. For more information on the course registration system, visit Course Registration for UG Students.

Examples of circumstances in which students have to take a required course in a different semester than that specified in the recommended study pathway are: failure in a previous attempt, deviation from study pathway due to study leave/internship/exchange program/previously required to take a reduced study load.

You should submit an add request using the course registration system, leaving a short note explaining your case. Due to the physical limit of computer labs and classrooms, as well as the fact that there are fluctuations in the enrolment numbers during the add/drop period (first two weeks of class), we may have to wait till the second week of the add/drop period to add special places for such students. Please go ahead and attend the lecture/lab/tutorials. If your problem is still unresolved by the beginning of the second week of the add/drop period, please send an email to .

If the time conflict is with another required course that has not been pre-registered for you (e.g., honors courses, courses that you have failed before), please first submit an add/swap request using the course registration system, and then send an email to specifying the courses you have timetable conflict and which lecture/tutorial/lab section(s) you can attend. Please inform us as soon as possible since such requests require us to liaise with other department (e.g., LANG, MATH) and the ARR.

As a standard practice, if the time conflict is with an elective course that you wish to take, the department CANNOT help you to swap lecture/tutorial/lab section. The ARO have very strict rules on additions of special quota. Please submit a swap request using the course registration system. If the swapping request is unsuccessful, you simply have to try to take that elective in another semester.

Students would need to apply for cross career at class enrollment page. The case would then be reviewed by the course instructors.

Even though ISOM 2500 is exclusive to MATH 2411, you should not substitute it for the required course requirement. You should take ELEC 2600, ELEC 2600H, IEDA 2520, IEDA 2540, MATH 2421 or MATH 2431 to fulfill it. The ISOM 2500 may then be counted toward your electives.

No. The University does not allow students to repeat a passed course.

For Term Grade Average (TGA), Cumulative Grade Average (CGA) and Major Cumulative Grade Average (MCGA), please refer to the section 8, Grade Averages, of the Academic Regulations.

1. GGA only applies to 2017-18 intake and before. Students may apply for GGA exclusion for surplus courses to improve their GGA.
2. MCGA & CGA apply to 2018-19 intake and after. There is no exclusion for any courses for the calculation of MCGA & CGA. Students may choose to swap the elective courses in the advisement report to improve their MCGA.
   https://registry.hkust.edu.hk/resource-library/graduation-check-process-ug

For more information about degree classification, please visit https://registry.hkust.edu.hk/resource-library/degree-classification-ug

Whether a course will be offered in a particular semester depends on many factors. To give students more flexibility in planning their study we try to offer core, required, and popular elective courses as frequently as possible, preferably every semester. See the courses to be offered in the coming semesters. Note that the actual offering schedule may vary slightly from year to year.

If you take one of the above courses, it can be used to satisfy COMP required course, Engineering Fundamental course, and common core requirements. This is a special arrangement for COMP major student. However please note the credits of any single course can never be counted twice although the same course may be used to satisfy multiple requirements.

Students in the Entrepreneur option normally take COMP 4911, as it is a course relevant to their study. However, in some exceptional cases, students may seek course deviation approval to take ELEC 3710 or MGMT 4220 instead.

Final year UG students may apply for a letter stating the current class rank if he/she would need it for applying further studies. If needed, please contact for more information. Note that it would normally take 3-5 working days to prepare the letter, and it would only show your class rank and would not show the distribution of CGA.

For academic procedures and regulations, please consult .

For academic advice, please approach your academic advisor, i.e. your COMP 4900 academic advisor and/or the UG advising team.