Some 945,000 people have applied to attend the 2004 national examination for students studying for a master's degree, up 18.4 percent, or 148,000 more than the figure for this year, the Ministry of Education announced here Monday.

Among the applicants, 474,000 are in their last year of university study, 90,000 more than the figure for this year, or up23.4 percent.

The 10 most popular subjects are MBA, computer application technology, law, enterprise management, finance, telecommunications and information systems, surgery, internal medicine, English language and literature, and accounting.

The top universities for these applicants are Wuhan University,Beijing University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, Zhongshan University, Qinghua (Tsinghua) University, the People's University of China, Shandong University, Jilin University and Sichuan University.

More than 160,000 of the applicants have registered on-line, thanks to the opening of a special web page for the purpose.

Meanwhile, the police are busy cracking down on fraudulent on-line activities, as some people are selling so-called "examination papers" via the Internet.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 9, 2003)