The China Post news staff--A total of 1,016 mainland Chinese senior high graduates have been approved to study at private local universities, some 37 percent short of the projected goal of soliciting 1,613 such students, according to a list of students released yesterday.This is the first time for local universities to officially accept applications filed by mainland Chinese students to study at various departments and graduate schools of local universities. National universities focus on soliciting mainland Chinese graduate students to study at graduate schools, and private universities on seeking senior high students to study at various departments of the universities.

Of the private universities, Fu Jen Catholic University in New Taipei City and Feng Chia University in Taichung City showed the best performance in soliciting high-caliber Chinese senior high graduates to study at the universities.

According to Liu Chao-ming, dean of the Office of Academic Affairs of Fu Jen Catholic University, applicants approved to study at the university include as many as 176 mainland Chinese senior high graduates who are eligible for applying to study at China's Peking University, Tsinghua University and other prestigious Chinese universities if based on high scores in their joint senior high graduate examinations in the mainland.

Meanwhile, Chiu Chuang-chien, dean of the Office of Academic Affairs of Feng Chia University, also noted his university has successfully solicited 120 high-class Chinese senior high graduates qualified to study at top-notch universities in China with their high scores in the said examinations.

Fu Jen Catholic University was quite aggressive in soliciting mainland Chinese students to study at the university by running massive ads via Beijing TV, China Central TV and China National Radio one week before the deadline for accepting applications, according to Liu Chao-ming.

Liu said the ads worked well, as the number of applicants for studying at Fu Jen shot up to 1,200 from 400 in the wake of the one-week promotional ad.

Liu said most of approved Chinese students chose to study at departments of finance, economics, law, mass communications, mathematics, physics, chemistry and social science.

On another front, Taiwan's national universities solicited in early June only 228 Chinese university graduate students to study at their graduate schools, and more than 100 of them failed to complete registration later on, making the real number of Chinese students registering to study at graduate schools lag behind the projected goal by 62 percent.

In fact, Chinese transfer students in Taiwan gave the real reason behind the sluggish willingness of Chinese university students to study at graduate schools of national universities in Taiwan. They said if they want to study at graduate schools, their top priority is to study at graduate schools of famous U.S. or European universities, and second priority is to study in famous universities in Singapore or Hong Kong.

Presidents of local universities opined that Taiwan universities are inferior to famous universities in the U.S. and Europe in terms of competitiveness, thus failing to attract Chinese students to study at graduate schools of local universities, let alone other undesirable restrictions such as being not allowed to work after completing studies in Taiwan and fellowships not being available.