- Cheung Ming-hung overcame an unstable family life and severe struggles in school to get admitted to University of Hong Kong medical school
- The 20-year-old was ranked first in Hong Kong for juniors in 2022 for the high jump category
Cheung Ming-hung, a 20-year-old dental student, had to repeat a grade in school and got into several fights. Photo: HandoutCheung Ming-hung, a 20-year-old dental student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), was once considered a “bad” student who repeated a grade and got into fights.
When he was in Form Three, during the Covid-19 pandemic, he even accumulated more than twenty blemish records at school, primarily for being late.
“If it weren’t for the suspension of classes due to the pandemic, I probably could have set a record,” he said.
His struggles extended beyond punctuality. “I had so much pending homework from Forms One and Two that I had to serve detention until Form Three,” said Cheung, a graduate of CCC Heep Woh College.
He would also argue with his teachers, perhaps to seek attention, as he was no longer the outstanding student he was in primary school, when he was part of the Hong Kong maths team. To catch up academically, he even had to repeat Form One.
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His home life was also tumultuous, with constant arguments between his parents, to the point where he once called the police during one of their disputes.
“At night, I could hear my parents arguing, which really scared me,” he shared.
During Form Three, a particularly intense argument with his parents pushed him to his limit, leading him to move out and live with his godparents.
“I had to rely on myself. In Hong Kong society, as harsh as it may sound, if you do well in school, your future won’t be miserable,” Cheung said. That year, he missed the opportunity to choose physics as an elective due to insufficient grades. He then set a goal to enter university to study medicine, a field with high academic requirements.
To achieve his goal, Cheung studied physics on his own in Form Five and caught up with his peers in just over a year, achieving a mark of 5** on the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) physics exam.
He was admitted to HKU’s medical programme with a total score of 33 in his best five subjects, later switching his major to dentistry.
Cheung also sacrificed his training time for the high jump despite being ranked first in Hong Kong for juniors in 2022, which could have led to opportunities to join the Hong Kong representative team. “I needed to manage my time ... The real challenge is to keep trying and persisting even when you can’t see any progress.”
Cheung Ming-hung was this year’s Best Improvement winner at the Student of the Year Awards. The award is organised by the South China Morning Post and solely sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club.