Asia's Top Young Universities: NTU vs HKUST

If you’re still trying to decide between NTU and HKUST, a look at the QS World University Rankings by Subject can help narrow down each university’s individual subject strengths. NTU is the leader for four out of the five broad subject areas included in the rankings, ranking only five places behind HKUST for social sciences & management, at 29^th to HKUST’s 24^th.

The table below lets you see how NTU and HKUST directly compare for each discipline.

Both these rival Asian universities are in huge, bustling cities, both of which are considered expensive to live in but offer great economic prosperity and job opportunities. NTU is found in the West Region of Singapore, adjacent to the town of Jurong West, and boasts the largest university campus in the city at 490 acres. HKUST meanwhile is set in the attractive Clear Water Bay area on a 150-acre campus less than 30 minutes’ drive from central Hong Kong (SAR).

Looking at the QS Best Student Cities 2018, Hong Kong has a slight lead, ranked 12^th while Singapore is ranked 15^th. When you consider the indicators used to compile the rankings, Singapore beats Hong Kong for desirability and employer activity, whereas Hong Kong achieves a much higher score for affordability (and a slightly stronger score for ‘student view’).

Rent in Hong Kong is often considered extortionate but traveling and eating out can be done at a low cost. Singapore was also ranked as the world’s most expensive city in The Economist's Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2018. This might sound alarming, but if you take tuition fees into account, both Singapore and Hong Kong are still more affordable than other popular study destinations. Both are also highly multicultural, with Hong Kong branded as "Asia's World City", so you should adapt easily to living here no matter where you’re from originally.

NTU has around 31,800 students, of which 8,074 are postgraduates, while HKUST is much smaller, with less than half the number of students NTU has at approximately 14,807 students (roughly two-thirds of whom are undergraduates). There’s no data for the number of international students at NTU, but at HKUST there were 5,060 as of September 2017, which is 34 percent of the total number, and the university also receives a stronger score than NTU for its percentage of international students.

Tuition fees at both NTU and HKUST vary depending on your study level, subject and other factors – at NTU, fees are affected by whether students are in receipt of the MOE Tuition Grant. These grants, offered by the Ministry of Education, can help both domestic and international students cover a significant amount of their tuition costs, in exchange for agreeing to work for a Singaporean company for at least three years after graduating (or five or six years for medicine and dentistry graduates). The table below gives you an idea of how the most recent figures for tuition fees at each university compare.

NTU and HKUST each offer a range of financial aid options to help students fund their studies. For example, at NTU, loans, bursaries and scholarships are available, and the university has a calculator which students can use to determine their annual financial need. Scholarships offered by NTU include the Nanyang Scholarship for outstanding undergraduate students of any nationality, the Nanyang President's Graduate Scholarship, which seeks to encourage graduates to study a PhD at NTU, and the NTU Research Scholarship for prospective local or international PhD students.

Meanwhile, HKUST’s Scholarships and Financial Aid Office (SFAO) should be students’ main port of call in searching for financial assistance at the university, with a range of scholarships, bursaries and loans available. Students can use the university’s scholarship search tool to find scholarship options relating to their subject and study level, with 145 available at the time of writing. Students could also research their eligibility for a HKSAR Government Scholarship – 86 of these were awarded in the 2016/17 academic year. PhD students could apply for the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS).

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This article was originally published in September 2014. It was last updated in June 2018 to incorporate the latest ranking results.