Question
of the century:
Which university suits me better?
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Ah yes, the question every prospective student who wants to study medicine in Hong Kong and their parents have thought of before. I wish there is a simple answer we can give you. In truth, it's much more complicated than that. (Trust us, we've all been through this process). Instead, here we hope to give you the most detailed, unbiased comparison of both universities on the internet, both the good and the bad, so you can decide which one you should pursue. There is no "superior" university, just one that fits you or your child better.
Prologue
You just know this is going to be a long ride when you see the word "prologue". Indeed, this is the single most comprehensive comparison of the two universities available on the internet written by students currently studying them. So, grab a snack turn on some music and enjoy.
This comparison goes in depth into both university and reveals secrets that they may not want you to know. Full disclosure: Neither university have any say over this comparison, all our editors will remain anonymous to protect them from being pressured by third-parties to make any biased comments. This is a completely independent review jointly written by current medical students from both universities. Please also note that this comparison is merely our experience opinion and which may not be the same for every student.
Realistically, there are three main categories for comparison between the two universities. We highly recommend reading the entire comparison to get a more comprehensive understanding of both universities before making a decision. However, if you would like to skip to a certain section, please click the respective icon below.
Curriculum
Ah, The Curriculum, the thing that you probably put the most consideration into when deciding which university would suit you more. 95% of the faculty’s page of both universities focuses on this aspect, trying their best to convince you that theirs is far better than their competitor across the harbor. In reality, curriculum differences may not really be as important as you might think. In this comparison, we will give you insight into the actual ups and downs of both curriculums, rather than what the faculties want you to see.
Course structure
Both universities operate on a 6 year basis, with the option for you to skip one year and graduate in 5 (We’ll talk more about that later.) HKU teaches off a system basis, so you will learn about both the anatomy and physiology of a system before moving on to the next. CUHK teaches on a course basis, split between Anatomy, Physiology and Molecular Medicine. This is, however, not really important as you’ll end up having to learn everything anyways. The main difference is that HKU teaches the entire preclinical curriculum in 2 years, while CUHK teaches it in 3. So the schedule will be more packed for HKU and less packed for CUHK. This also means for HKU you will have an extra year, famously known as the enrichment year.
Lectures
"HKU prioritize flexibility while CUHK prioritize stable progress"
Both HKU and CUHK use lectures as the main way to convey most of the knowledge that will be examined in the professional exams. For HKU, about half of the lectures are conducted on campus while the other half are in the form of pre-recorded video posted online. There are no attendance requirements for on campus lectures and all lectures will be recorded and posted online. This is great for those who prioritize flexibility and have a strong sense of self-motivation, as you will have a more flexible schedule without attendance requirement at the cost of needing the self-discipline to keep up with all the lecture content. For CUHK, all lectures are conducted on campus. While there are online reviews available for these lectures, CUHK demands a 50% attendance for on campus lectures. This is great for people who may lack the self-discipline to set your own studying pace, as the lecture frequency and content have been mandatorily set up for you by the faculty. Unfortunately, this sacrifices flexibility and forces those who may have a faster or slower studying face to adhere to the faculty’s schedule (As you are required to go to exact lectures at exact times).
Tutorials
"HKU’s PBL are stressful yet may be useful while CUHK’s tutorial are pretty useless"
Another form of teaching in medical school is tutorials. In HKU, the main kinds of tutorials you will encounter are PBL (Problem-based learning). Removing the glamorization by both the media and faculty themselves, what you are really doing during this session is getting an unknown medical case in groups of ~8 students, having no knowledge of what is going on and trying to answer every question by googling. All the time under the guidance (or should we say supervision) of a professor. The quality of PBL really lies on the competence of the tutor guiding you, and their way of teaching may not always be the one you prefer, so it’s really up to luck. The good side of PBL is that indeed you will be more proficient in self-learning and it forces you to do additional medical readings and preparation before class. The downside is that this can sometimes get stressful especially when the case is really hard or if you encounter a particularly harsh tutor. In CUHK, to put it quite frankly, tutorials are pretty useless. ~20 students will sit in a room listening to professors (sometimes teaching assistants) repeat what was already taught in lectures three weeks ago and go through a case that will never appear in exams. Unless you are really lucky to encounter the best tutors such as Prof. Au, you will end up spending the 45 minutes snoozing away or reading from the answers handed down by your seniors (Yes, they reuse the exact same question every year for their tutorials). So, please do not bring your hopes up for tutorials for CUHK.
Dissection
"Same for both universities"
Dissection workshop is a core part of the preclinical curriculum of both universities. During the dissection workshop, you will be able to learn anatomy first hand and get the first opportunity to see if you may enjoy being a surgeon in the future. In HKU, dissection takes place starting from the second semester of year one while in CUHK you start in year two. Generally speaking, less students share a cadaver in HKU than CUHK. There is not much difference between the two universities here.
Enrichment year (EY)
"Amazing opportunities but with some limitations"
Enrichment year is the thing that the PR team from MBBS loves the most, it’s what differentiates herself from CUHK’s MBChB. Indeed, enrichment year is a great opportunity. Having a whole year to just go out and explore the world worry free is probably one of the best experiences you can get in university. I’m sure you’ve heard enough about how good it is from the faculty’s promotion by now, so we’ll get straight into the trade-offs. For starters, having a gap year between your preclinical year and clinical year will lead to you forgetting a large portion of what you learnt by the time you get to the hospital. It will take some time and effort to revisit all the knowledge but it’s actually not as bad (Our CUHK editors seem to also not remember much from their preclinical years). Apart from that, if you have an Ivy-league university in mind for the enrichment year, forget it. If you want to get into Oxbridge, note that there is only one to two quotas for each university. The order in which you get to choose which university to go to is the ranking in the MBBS exam, which means you’ll have to beat 260 other top students to get that spot. On a positive note, if your goal is simply to find a university in the UK / US, there are many options that are available to more students (University of Bristol for example, boasts an impressive record of taking in 10% of the entire HKU cohort this year). Regardless of your grade, you are sure to get the opportunity of a lifetime to travel, meet new friends and experience brand new cultures abroad.
University life
University is very different from secondary school, you are given complete freedom and control over your own time. There are numerous things that can be experience in University, from joining societies to living in a hostel. After all, you will be spending your next 40 years after graduation in a hospital or clinic, you might just want to take the opportunity to try out non medicine-related activities. In this section, we will explore what the two universities offer, as well as the difference in university life that you may experience in these two universities.
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Available time
“Year 1 for CUHK & Year 3 for HKU ”
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Medicine is notorious for being one of the most difficult and time consuming subjects. Despite this, I am sure you would still like to experience university life rather than spending all your time sitting at the library studying. If having sufficient free time to experience university life fully is very important to you, then CUHK may be the university that you are looking for. The curriculum of year one in CUHK is very easy, there are very few lessons and all the content taught is quite simple (Compared to that of HKU). It is quite common for CUHK year one to spend more than 90% of their time on activities unrelated to medicine, whether that may be Sheung Jorng (joining societies), training in a sports team or participating in college activities. For HKU however, year one curriculum is already quite hard and demands a lot of time and attention if you want to pass safely. It is still possible to participate in university activities in HKU but be prepared to spend a large portion of your first year in university studying. Furthermore, the summers of HKU are generally a month shorter than CUHK for the first two years.
While HKU students may not have a lot of time to play during year one, they make up for it with their enrichment year in year 3, where most will spend the entire year overseas. This year is pretty much stress free for HKU students and allows you to explore the world and expand your horizon as well. For CUHK students, year 3 is quite a challenging year, with much less time to play compared to HKU. This is great for those who do not mind sacrificing their free time for the first two years of university life in exchange for an amazing third year.
Hall life
“CUHK has more hostels available while HKU has better hostel cohesion”
Hall life is a must-experience part of university. In CUHK, approximately one third of the students are living in hostels while that number is only ~10% for HKU. Furthermore, CUHK guarantees at least one year of hostels compared to no guarantee from HKU. You are more likely to get into a hostel in CUHK than HKU, this is especially important to those living far away from the school premise. CUHK also runs a system that prioritizes giving hostels to those living far away while HKU does not, adding another reason why commuters should consider CUHK.
Most students are unable to stay more than one to two years in CUHK hostels, as space is allocated to newcomers. This causes the hostel to be less like a group of friends living together and more like Hotel rooms where you do not even know the name of the person living next to you. In HKU, most hostel spots are permanent and you will reside there until your graduation. The result is that those living in the same floor or sometimes even in the same hostel will spend years living together and eventually become lifelong friends. This is unfortunately rare the case for CUHK
Cultural difference
“HKU is more international while CUHK tends to be more local”
While we hate to stigmatize certain universities or certain groups of people into “international” or “local”, unfortunately this seems to be the case for the two universities. By “international” and “local” we simply imply the activities that these people may be drawn towards, whether it is closer to those more students from overseas would do or those more students from traditional local secondary schools would do.
HKU is known to accept more students from the IB curriculum, most of which come from international schools around Hong Kong or from overseas. Therefore, if you yourself is studying in an international school or coming from overseas, you are more likely going to have similar interests and common topics to them. CUHK is the opposite, meaning if you do not come from either or these schools peers from CUHK are more likely to have similar interests and common topics to you. Do note that this is just a very generalized view and is different to every cohort and person. You will still make friends and find people whose interests align with yours regardless of which university you choose.
Opportunities to make new friends
“CUHK offers more option to meet new friends and have an overall better structure to encourage socializing”
During your first years in HKU, you may meet new friends through O-camp or your PBL group. Your O-camp group will be the group of friends that plays the orientation camp with you, you are likely to meet your first few friends in your cohort here. Each year you will be given a different PBL group, one for each semester. You will be spending all your PBL lessons with them so it is likely you will become friends with them too. Additionally, you can choose to join a society such as Medici band (Medicine band), Medical society or other HKU society to meet new friends. Societies such as medical outreachers and AMSAHK are available for both HKU and CUHK students.
For CUHK, you have a much wider range of opportunities to meet new friends. There are two O-camps in CUHK, one for medicine (Where you will meet you saijo) and one for your college. Typically, your saijo (small group) will be the first and likely best friend group in university. They will accompany you throughout your 6 years in CUHK and be your closest support for medicine-related challenges. Furthermore, you will also be able to join many different medicine-related societies such as Medical society, Medegg (drama society by medical student) etc. Your college will also offer you more societies to join, making it much more than what HKU offers. Of course, you are welcome to meet new friends through ways of your liking in both universities, these are only ways the university tries to help with your social life.
Passing rate
“ CUHK has a slightly higher passing rate for exams than HKU”
This is the most overlooked part when choosing HKU vs CUHK. It is also something that you will never find on the program's website or hear from either universities. Yet, this is arguably the most important factor you should consider. These are the details that you will not be able to find anywhere else on the web. After all, what is the point of anything else when you can’t pass your exam and graduate?
Comparing the statistics from recent years. For CUHK, the passing rate for preclinical year is around 99%, with only around one to two students having to repeat for academic reasons. For HKU, the passing rate for the first two years is also around 98%, with around four to five students having to repeat for academic reasons. CUHK has a slight edge in terms of passing rate when considering only academics and may therefore be attractive for those who have some doubts about their ability in studying medicine.
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Conclusion
It would be counterproductive if we end the comparison by telling you which university we prefer, your preference will be closely linked to your priorities and will be vastly different from your peers. There is simply no "better" university, they are tailored towards different kinds of people. Instead, we would like to spend this time to tell you a few honest words. Some of us enjoyed the university we chose, others may have regretted their choice. These thoughts usually vanish after a few months, where we will fully integrate into the university that we selected. Whichever university you choose, at the end of the day, we will all be studying the same subject and will eventually become a doctor. That is what truly matters.