A GROWING ATTRACTION

HKU admits a sizeable number of non-local students to support our aim of promoting intercultural understanding and to ensure students study alongside some of the brightest young people in the world.

In 2012–13 we admitted 654 first-year undergraduates from Mainland China (nine per cent of the total) and almost 450 students from elsewhere (seven per cent). Applications were up by 20 per cent for Mainland students and 44 per cent for international students, reflecting the double cohort intake to both the three-year and four-year undergraduate programmes.

Moreover, many of the applications were from further-flung places – remote parts of China such as Gansu province and countries such as Argentina, Ethiopia and Iceland. The growing interest in HKU follows stepped-up efforts by the University to reach out to potential students through social media, and to visit such places as the Indian sub-continent and Korea to meet with secondary school students there. The University's strong position in international ranking charts is also helping to attract attention.

Naslam Basheer, a Biomedical Engineering student from Sri Lanka, enrolled in HKU in September 2011 after a HKU representative visited his school and he subsequently joined a one-week workshop here. He is full of enthusiasm for his experiences here. "What I like about HKU is it cares for its students right from the start," he says. "There are also a lot of opportunities to meet with many different people from different cultures. You live every day in a rush with deadlines and lots of activities and sports, and that is going to help you in the long term."

Varvara Bortsova, a second-year Journalism undergraduate from Russia, similarly found her first year highly stimulating. "University life in HKU can be challenging, fast-paced, stressful, fun, exhilarating. One of the highlights is meeting such a great number of intelligent people from all over the world."

Guo Yinbao, a Business student from Gansu, said she was attracted to HKU by the opportunity to study business in an international environment. "I also like the free elective system at HKU – it allows me to have maximum interest development. I'm interested in history and I was able to take a history course in my first semester," she says.

Liu Bingqian, an Engineering student from Shandong, was originally attracted by the University's ranking and soon also became impressed by the range of choice on offer. "The free atmosphere allows us to learn and think independently. I also get a chance to communicate and cooperate with different kinds of people and that reminds me all the time of the inclusivity and diversity at HKU," she says.