If you have any question regarding Academics that is not clearly or thoroughly answered in the following paragraphs, please do not hesitate to contact the
Education Administration Office for advice.
Schedule
The PKU Shenzhen academic year is comprised of two semesters: the Fall Semester and the Spring Semester.
The duration of each semester is generally 18 weeks, including two weeks of revision and finals at the end.
The summer break begins at the end of June and lasts eight weeks. The winter break depends on the Chinese traditional lunar calendar and lasts four weeks: ten days before Chinese New Year and ten days after.
For more details, please refer to the
academic calendar.
Duration of studies
School of Transnational Law: three years. The program also includes an elective fourth year course, devoted to a survey of Chinese Law, taught in Mandarin Chinese.
HSBC Business School: two years. Students are expected to earn 36 credits through 12 courses - including 4 required courses and 8 elective courses - and to complete a Master thesis.
Students may apply for early graduation if they have fulfilled their graduation requirements prior to their designated time of graduation. They may also request an extension. For HSBC Business School, they must apply for the extension in the second term of the second year. The extension period can be from six month to one year.
Courses
After registering, international students are advised to inquire into their program' required courses, the total number of units and the graduation thesis or project that they must complete in order to graduate.
This information can be found on the following websites:
http://sam.pkusz.edu.cn/en/
All international students share the same classes (except the course on Chinese language) and graduation requirements with native Chinese students.
Types of Courses
Courses are comprised of two categories: required courses and elective courses.
- Required courses are the courses that have been determined by the student's program and that students must complete in order to fulfill their program's graduation requirements. They include general education courses and the core courses of the student's major.
- Elective courses are the courses which students are free to choose and enroll in according to their personal interests. The elective courses comprise the general elective courses and the elective courses that pertain to the student' major.
Since the degree requirements for completing certain required courses vary from one program to another, students are advised to arrange appointments with a course administrator from their program who can help them with their course selection.
Class Selection
Students must enroll in and attend the classes that correlate with their program's graduation requirements. They must enroll for classes in their program's department only (except for the course on Chinese language).
The class enrollment period generally begins on the week-end before the first day of the semester. Students have two weeks of interim period to tryout their classes. During this time, students are allowed to change their classes by dropping and enrolling into new classes. Students may change their classes online through
Peking University graduate school's website. As the website is for now in Chinese only, please ask the help from your department's administration or the Education Administration Office. The class enrollment period ends together with the two weeks interim period of class tryouts. Beginning from the third week of the semester, the students' list of enrolled classes becomes permanent and further changes cannot be made. If a student drops a class halfway through the semester, or if he or she does not take the tests or exams for a class, the University will consider the student to have failed the course and will already record this failure in his or her transcript.
