June is an anxious month for China’s school leavers as millions of students wait to hear whether they have gained a place at university. But a group of schools in Jiangsu province helped ease applicants’ fears by live streaming a Q&A session on college admissions on June 15.

Representatives from 11 of the region’s top universities took part in the live stream, including Nanjing University, Southeast University and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The admissions officers fielded a range of questions from students and their families, from their school’s best majors to scholarship application procedures.

East China’s Jiangsu province opens an advisory meeting on local college admissions through the live streaming platform Open Class on June 15. [Photo/ec.js.edu.cn]

Li Hao from Nanjing University took the opportunity to explain a major change in the school’s undergraduate admissions process during the broadcast.

Previously, applicants would apply for a specific major and then be locked into that course for their entire time at Nanjing University, but now students are able to select an area of interest and then take a variety of courses in that field during their first two years before committing to a major.

“That’s a smart way to prevent students from blind choices, encouraging them to carefully think about their interests and strong points. It is also the university’s answer to how to meet society’s ever-increasing need for interdisciplinary talents,” explained Li.

As a result, the university’s 39 majors have been condensed into 15 disciplines from which new applicants can select, including arts and humanities, foreign languages and literature, mathematical and physical sciences, chemistry and life science, information technology and clinical medicine.

Students who want to change their focus of study after enrolling will have three opportunities to do so: They can change their major during the second semester of their freshman and sophomore years, or choose a minor after completing their major.

Li also introduced in detail the foreign language studies at Nanjing University. As a specialty of the school, Nanjing University now offers courses in seven languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Korean, and many students will be offered opportunities to study abroad or take part in an exchange program.