A total of 37,365 applicants have applied for the undergraduate’s admission of the 2003 academic year with 680 applicants approved, setting a low record of the enrollment rate, the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) announced today.

In order to avoid repeated enrollment, 295 applicants were approved as alternate since each student can apply up to departments or institutes of eight schools, a staff member of OAA said.

Noting that 60 applicants approved by Department of International Trade (DIT) will be assigned to an English-teaching class. That is to say that all the courses will be commanded in English and the class will together take part in the Junior Abroad Program. DIT held a student recruiting orientation on Taipei Campus on May 20 and 22. More than 100 applicants and their parents attended the meeting. DIT also invited these would-be-freshmen to tour Tamsui Campus on May 27.

According to DIT, in addition to pre-five core courses with which will be taught in Mandarin, all the remaining courses, including post-five core courses, will be commanded in English. The pre-five core courses are History, Liberal Arts, Military Training and physical education. Moreover, in order to match the course design of the one-year “Junior Abroad Program”, the priority of the course design in the first and second year will be laid on the development of basic international trade theory.

The course design for Junior Abroad Program will center on the academic field toward the four-oriented development (international marketing, international business management, international financial management and international economics). The course design for the fourth year will focus on the demonstration of DIT exclusive characteristics and development on local market. This class will equip with a powerful competitiveness on local employment market, on either their English abilities or international trade capacities.

OAA had already mailed a sheet to those approved applicants. They should return the letter of inquiry to OAA by April 30 and OAA will publish the registered name list on May 6. OAA will begin to fill the vacancy with alternate after the registering name list was announced.