The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

香港科技大學 · HKUST · UGC-funded university

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First-year admissions, 2025/26 (FTE)

3,210

14.4% of all UGC-funded first-year admissions

Non-local

29.5%

948 FTE

From the Chinese Mainland

18.4%

590 FTE

Senior-year admissions, 2025/26 (FTE)

162

First-year-first-degree figures are admissions to the first year of a bachelor's degree on UGC-funded programmes, in full-time equivalents — not enrolment, and not headcount. Places on the same universities' self-financed programmes are not included. This covers the universities funded through the University Grants Committee, and only their UGC-funded places. Self-financing institutions — Hong Kong Metropolitan University and the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, for example — and the self-financed programmes those universities also run are not in the UGC's datasets, so they are not listed here.

First-year admissions by place of origin, 2010/11–2025/26

Full-time equivalents. “Non-local” is the UGC's place-of-origin split: students from the Chinese Mainland, other places in Asia and the rest of the world. Where the file has no “rest of the world” row for a university and year, it is shown as “—” and the share is over the rows published. 2012/13 was a double-cohort year: the last A-level and the first HKDSE students entered university together when Hong Kong moved to four-year degrees, so first-year admissions roughly doubled that year.

Non-local share of first-year admissions

2010/11: 13.4%2025/26: 29.5%

Year	All	Local	Chinese Mainland	Other Asia	Rest of world	Non-local
2025/26	3,210	2,262	590	301	57	29.5%
2024/25	2,798	2,154	347	263	34	23.0%
2023/24	2,613	2,055	280	252	26	21.4%
2022/23	2,624	2,105	238	246	35	19.8%
2021/22	2,725	2,177	244	271	33	20.1%
2020/21	2,507	1,971	253	267	16	21.4%
2019/20	2,480	2,027	203	229	21	18.3%
2018/19	2,459	1,963	199	274	23	20.2%
2017/18	2,452	1,994	183	256	19	18.7%
2016/17	2,336	1,956	171	191	18	16.3%
2015/16	2,307	1,908	162	210	27	17.3%
2014/15	2,179	1,807	168	174	30	17.1%
2013/14	2,223	1,845	172	183	23	17.0%
2012/13double cohort	4,177	3,610	318	210	39	13.6%
2011/12	2,168	1,849	169	124	26	14.7%
2010/11	2,034	1,762	140	107	25	13.4%

Senior-year admissions, 2009/10–2025/26

Senior-year admissions are students admitted directly into a later year of a UGC-funded bachelor's degree rather than its first year, in full-time equivalents. The file lists full-time study only.

2025/26	162
2024/25	164
2023/24	164
2022/23	162
2021/22	161
2020/21	153
2019/20	157
2018/19	155
2017/18	155
2016/17	164
2015/16	123
2014/15	102
2013/14	113
2012/13	121
2011/12	80
2010/11	60
2009/10	60

Staff in academic departments, 2025/26

Headcount. Staff are a headcount of everyone in the university's academic departments, whatever the source of their salary — including posts paid wholly from the university's own self-financed income. It is not a count of teaching staff for UGC-funded students, and no student-to-staff ratio can be drawn from it.

Grade	Full-time	Part-time	Short-term
Senior Academic Staff	400	24	33
Junior Academic Staff	308	5	18
Academic Supporting Staff	343	38	51
Technical Research Staff	1,084	192	380
Administrative, Technical and Other Staff	678	19	7
All grades	2,813	278	489

708 full-time senior and junior academic staff in 2025/26 (460 in 2009/10). 1,981 of the 3,580 staff (55.3%) are paid wholly from self-financed income.

Research grants

Research grants are the amounts the UGC lists for each university under each research funding scheme in its file, in HK$ million, for the two academic years in its file. The total is our sum.

Scheme	2023/24	2024/25
RGC Earmarked Research Grants研究用途補助金	HK$196.2m	HK$209.2m
Theme-based Research Scheme主題研究計劃	HK$57.0m	HK$69.6m
Areas of Excellence Scheme卓越學科領域計劃	HK$40.3m	HK$63.0m
Research Fellowship Schemes研究奬學金計劃	HK$40.0m	HK$55.0m
Research Impact Fund研究影響基金	HK$13.1m	HK$8.3m
Research Matching Grant研究配對補助金	HK$27.4m	HK$0.0m
Strategic Topics Grant策略專題研究資助金	HK$11.8m	HK$10.8m
Co-funding Mechanism on Joint Laboratories with the Chinese Academy of Sciences中國科學院與香港地區聯合實驗室共同資助機制	HK$1.1m	HK$1.1m
Total (our sum)	HK$386.9m	HK$417.0m

2024/25: HK$417.0m in all.

What it costs

Local students on UGC-funded places pay a tuition fee set by the Government; non-local students pay a higher fee that each university sets. Neither fee is in the open data used here — check the university's own admissions pages.

The other UGC-funded universities: The University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, The Education University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University

Source: University Grants Committee Secretariat, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region — datasets “First-year-first-degree Student Admissions (Full-time equivalent) of UGC-funded Programmes by University and Place of Origin”, “Senior-year Student Admissions (Full-time equivalent) of UGC-funded Programmes by University and Mode of Study”, “Staff Number (Headcount) in Academic Departments of UGC-funded Universities by Source of Salary Funding, University, Staff Grade and Mode of Employment” and “Research grants for UGC-funded universities”, obtained from DATA.GOV.HK (https://data.gov.hk) and the Common Spatial Data Infrastructure (CSDI) Portal (https://portal.csdi.gov.hk). The intellectual property rights in the data belong to the Government of the Hong Kong SAR and the University Grants Committee. Sums, shares, abbreviations and the selection of years are CollegeMatcher's; CollegeMatcher is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Government or the UGC.