Bulletin Spring 1988

1987 Freshmen ： A Profile The annual survey on new students of the University conducted by the Office of Student Affairs revealed statistics of students that altogether presented an interesting profile of the student population. Of the 1,473 full-time first-year students admitted to the University in September 1987 ， 98.8% of them responded to the survey while all of the 142 part-time students also participated. Freshmen of the Full-time Programmes Statistics revealed that the overall male to female ratio among the freshmen is 1:1.1. However, male students still form the majority in the Faculty of Medicine (75.6%) and the Faculty of Science (71.8%). The average age of the students is 18.4 years, while male and female averages are 18.6 and 18.2 respectively. Some 72% of the students profess no religious belief. The others are mainly protestants (20.2%) and catholics (6.4%). Freshmen in general have had an active non- academic life before entering the University: 99.4% of them having participated in various extracurricular activities at school, and 82% having travelled outside Hong Kong. 6% of the freshmen have had the experience of full-time employment and 58.5% the experience of summer work prior to entering university. With respect to the level of educational attainment of student parents, it was found that some 19% of the fathers and 11.6% of the mothers received education to tertiary level. 34.4% of the fathers and 27.7% of the mothers were educated to secondary standard, while less than half of the parents received only primary school education. Of the parents' occupations, 21.3% of the fathers are production-related workers/drivers, 14.6% of them store-owners or merchants, 12.5% professionals or in managerial positions, and 7.5% skilled workers or technicians. A large majority of the mothers (58.3%) are housewives, while 19.8% of them are employed as production- related workers. The survey revealed that nearly 35% of the freshmen came from families with a monthly household income of $9,000 or above, while the median is $7,500. The average monthly household income per capita is $1,598.5, an increase by some 16% over the previous year's figure ($1,377). Over 90% of the freshmen have to rely in varying degrees on their families for financial support. Some 42% of them also indicated the need for government grants and loans. 37% of them plan to take up summer or part- time work to help provide for their education expenses. 48.7% of the freshmen live in Kowloon, 26.2% of them in the New Territories and 24.8% on Hong Kong Island. 40.2% of the freshmen live in public housing estates, representing a decrease of 3.3% compare household size is 5.3 persons. The overall average living area per person is 7.6 square metres, which is slightly higher than that of the previous year (7.3 square metres). However, nearly half of the freshmen (46.4%) do not have adequate facilities at home for a favourable study environment. About 71% of the freshmen therefore expressed a strong need for campus accommodation, according to the survey. As many as 97% of the students surveyed have chosen their major programmes out of an interest in the subject fields. Over three quarters of the participants 13