More than 600 students in Beijing have been competing with 4,400 students from other mainland cities for 300 places at the University of Hong Kong during interviews that ended Wednesday.

"Considering the keen competition and interviewees' good performances, we might enlarge our enrollment," said Alan Fan, student recruitment counselor with the university.

However, Fan said the enlargement will not be large enough to take all of the talent - it will probably number in the tens.

Last year, the university planned to enrol 250 mainland students but ended up taking 270.

Fan said the university will try its best to decide who it is taking by Thursday evening.

The University of Hong Kong received more than 9,000 applications from the mainland for the coveted places - about 1,200 applicants were from Beijing.

The university has been carrying out interviews in more than 10 cities on the mainland.

During the four days of interviews in Beijing, between June 27 and 30, the institution spoke to candidates from not only the capital but nearby areas including Tianjin, Hebei province and Liaoning province.

"We selected applicants for interview according to their scores in the college entrance examination and their English performance record," Fan said.

He said all the interviewees from Beijing had scored higher than 600 points and had at least a 125 in English.

The mainland students' English capability had improved a lot and about 80 percent of interviewees spoke fluent English, Fan said, adding that the number had not exceeded 50 percent in the past.

"Some of the students are very bright and they even have excellent language," said Hani El-Nezamy, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences with the University of Hong Kong, who was among those conducting interviews.

Fan said English proficiency was one of 10 interview items and interviewers also wanted to understand the students' comprehensive ability, such as presentation skills and global horizons.

Interviewees were divided into groups of seven and each group sat down with two professors for a discussion.

"Professors observed their performance and graded them according to the 10 items during the discussion," Fan said.

The topics the groups spoke about were wide-ranging and included online love affairs and Foxconn. Some interviewees said they had never attended such an interview before.

"They examined our teamwork and imagination, which we had not learned at school before," said an interviewee, surnamed Ma, who was from Liaoning province.

Ma said his group was asked to make up a children's story.

Ma scored 593 in the college entrance examination and had applied for two mainland universities but says, if the University of Hong Kong offers him a place, he will go there.

"Because the university in Hong Kong has a more active and international teaching method than universities in the mainland," Ma explained.