OBJECTIVES: To assess knowledge, sources of information and awareness towards prescription and non-prescription medicines usage among undergraduates enrolled at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). METHODS: This study was designed as a descriptive cross-sectional survey. A pre-validated questionnaire was used to elaborate students’ knowledge, sources of information and awareness towards prescription and non-prescription medicines. Study sample were undergraduates of USM living in hostels at main campus. By using a proportional based sampling method, 925 undergraduates were conveniently targeted for data collection. Descriptive statistics were used for data evaluation. SPPS v.22 was used for data analysis.   RESULTS: Majority of respondents were females (76.3%) and aged between 18-22 years (93.9%). Seven hundred and forty four (80.4%) agreed on given adequate information of medicine labels and 829 (86.9%) respondents read it before taking the medicines. In terms of medication usage, 41.2% preferred self-medication in health issues, however most of the respondents did not knew the proper use of medicine (n=687, 74.3%). The sources of medicine information were mostly friends, family and neighbours followed by internet, audio-visual media and printed materials (90.2, 83.0, 79.1 and 73.3% respectively). Six hundred and seventy two (72.6%) agreed that they require additional counselling from pharmacist and 74.7% need written medicine information. CONCLUSIONS: The ratio of students preferring self-medication was high in this study. Furthermore, students lack knowledge about proper use of medicine. Therefore, there is a need to educate the students on issues related to quality use of medicines.