The University of Hong Kong, with its 100 year old history, has grown with and helped shape the city from which it takes its name. Today, HKU has a proud reputation as a world-class comprehensive research university, having been consistently ranked over the last decade as the top English-medium university in Asia. The University recruits excellent academic staff from around the world, 50% being from outside Hong Kong. Just as Hong Kong is a confluence of East and West, so HKU also offers researchers unique opportunities to bridge cultures and continents, and to explore more on China-related studies. In what the Times Higher Education termed an “extreme makeover”, HKU recently “rebuilt its curriculum from the ground up to embrace ‘experiential learning’ and internationalism so as to produce ‘global citizens’”. A recent report by an international panel of experts commended HKU for its "integration of local and international students", recognizing its "friendly and internationalized campus" and the "high student satisfaction with the HKU learning experience". Competition for admission is intense, with, for example, over 10,000 specific applications to HKU for undergraduate programmes each year from Mainland China alone, of whom less than 300 are admitted.