Certain aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to techniques for encoding and decoding bits of information using cyclic redundancy check (CRC) concatenated polar encoding and decoding. A method generally includes obtaining the bits of information to be transmitted. The method includes performing CRC outer encoding of the bits of information using an even-weighted generator polynomial to produce CRC encoded bits. The method includes performing polar inner encoding of the CRC encoded bits to generate a codeword. The method includes discarding a first code bit at a beginning of the codeword. The shortened codeword is transmitted over a wireless medium. In another method, bit-level scrambling is performed on the CRC encoded bits before the polar encoding to. In another method, only odd-weighted generator polynomials are selected.