Hong Kong University vs. Chinese University of Hong Kong

What would life be without rankings? Probably our lives would be pretty much the same except for people would make choices about which schools to go to based on their own qualitative criteria instead of US News and World Report. But, they are a fact of life and living in a student in Hong Kong, university status is a pressure point that people love to touch.

The University of Hong Kong, colloquially referred to as HKU or Hong Kong University (by its own URL even), has the hands-down best rep of any school for thousands of miles. In nine out of ten introductions, people ask after learning that I'm a student here, "are you at HKU?" Here's what I found from my research into why people had such uniform questions:

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-colleges/2009/06/18/worlds-best-colleges-top-400.html

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-colleges/2009/06/18/worlds-best-colleges-asian-and-middle-eastern-universities.html

http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/asianuniversityrankings/asian_university_rankings_top_200_universities/

http://i.cs.hku.hk/~tse/topten.html

As I suspected, CUHK is playing second fiddle in the public opinion. To CUHK, HKU is Boston U.'s Harvard, NYU's Columbia, and Capella U.'s University of Phoenix. It still scores remarkably high on the global rankings. And though its neighbor is still a few points north, there are plenty of reasons to be proud to be a CUHK student. Two of my professors' names come up very frequently in Westlaw searches for articles about Chinese Corporate Law and Finance in Asia. My International Financial and Banking Law prof's name rings bells in anyone familiar with Hong Kong commercial litigation and another professor is notorious to the Chinese government for defending against expropriation. CUHK also is not very shy about boasting its 3 Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalist.

By the way, I checked out HKU when I was looking at programs to study abroad but their law faculty only accepts students from universities with which they have a partnership agreement. For better or worse, CUHK doesn't maintain such a policy. For law students who read this blog and still have time to study abroad, this barrier will come up at a lot of institutions that you check out...especially if you are a law student at UM which, to my knowledge, has no direct relationships with foreign universities. To circumvent it, you can find an American law school besides your own that has such a relationship and apply through their program.