The University of Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong is Hong Kong's oldest institution of higher education. It was incorporated in 1911 and admitted its first students in 1912. It absorbed the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, founded in 1887, where Sun Yat-sen studied. HKU is a public, English-medium comprehensive research university. Its main campus climbs the hillside at Pok Fu Lam on Hong Kong Island, joined by the Centennial Campus opened in 2012 and a medical campus on Sassoon Road.

HKU has ten faculties: Architecture, Arts, Business and Economics, Dentistry, Education, Engineering, Law, the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, Science and Social Sciences. The Graduate School coordinates research degrees. Medicine and public health are its strongest research fields. The School of Public Health helped identify the SARS coronavirus in 2003, and Queen Mary Hospital serves as the principal teaching hospital. The university also hosts several State Key Laboratories in the biomedical and life sciences.

HKU enrolls more than 30,000 students, and roughly half are postgraduates. Non-local students, most from mainland China but drawn from dozens of countries, make up a large share of taught postgraduate cohorts. Alumni include Sun Yat-sen, writer Eileen Chang and former Chief Executive Carrie Lam.

Graduate study is divided between research postgraduate degrees (MPhil and PhD) and a large portfolio of taught master's programs, most completed in one year of full-time study. Research students work under a principal supervisor, with PhDs typically taking three to four years. Funding sources include the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme and the HKU Presidential PhD Scholarship. The academic year has two semesters, September to December and January to May. The campus sits on the MTR Island Line, a short ride from Central.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, The University of Hong Kong lists 143 graduate programs across 46 subjects: 97 master's programs and 40 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in law, literature and biology. The University of Hong Kong holds rank 32 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.