A city that keeps losing its capital status still runs one of the country's oldest universities

In January 1999, a few months before I graduated, I traveled with classmates to Nanjing for a job fair — the same trip that took thirty hours by hard-seat train from Harbin. Nanjing University's campus was one of the places the fair routed us through, and I walked its gates and paths the way you'd walk through any public space: nobody checked an ID, nobody asked why a Harbin engineering student was standing in a Nanjing lecture hall's courtyard. That kind of casual access to a top Chinese university campus is largely gone today, the same shift this site's Shanghai university page describes for Fudan.

I have no insider's view of Nanjing University — never studied there, never worked there, only walked through it once, on a job-fair afternoon over a quarter-century ago. That's the same honest, dated distance the Fudan page was written from: not a student's perspective, not an alumnus's, but a stranger's, from a year when a campus gate meant something much simpler than it does now.

01 — What this university is

Nanjing University: founded in 1902, today a C9 member.

Nanjing University traces back to 1902, when Sanjiang Normal School was founded — one of the earliest modern institutions of higher learning in China, predating Fudan by three years. It went through several names and reorganizations — Liangjiang Normal School, Nanjing Higher Normal School, National Central University — before being renamed National Nanjing University in 1949. The following year it became simply Nanjing University. That naming history mirrors almost exactly the city's own habit of losing and regaining its bigger title.

Today NJU sits in the same national tiers as every other school on this site's university line — Project 985, Double First-Class Category A status, and membership in the C9 League. Its fellow members are Tsinghua, Peking University, Fudan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University, University of Science and Technology of China, Xi'an Jiao Tong University, and Harbin Institute of Technology. It ranked =103rd in the world in the 2026 QS World University Rankings, =62nd in the 2026 Times Higher Education rankings, and 75th in the 2025 Academic Ranking of World Universities. NJU covers 40 schools and departments across four campuses. Roughly 22 disciplines rank in the global top 1% by ESI. It's particularly strong in Chinese language and literature, history, chemistry, physics, computer science, and geosciences.

Of its 43,643 students, about 1,396 are international — a considerably smaller international footprint than Fudan's. I'm treating that as a clean, sourced enrollment count, not the blended student-visit figure the Fudan page had to flag as ambiguous.

02 — The gate, in plain terms

Undergraduate: Chinese-medium only, with a new CSCA test in 2026/2027.

Nanjing University's own current undergraduate admissions materials state flatly that all undergraduate majors use Chinese as the language of instruction — there's no separate English-medium undergraduate track the way some other C9 schools run. Starting in 2026/2027, international undergraduate applicants also need to submit a score from the China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA). It's a national-level test now rolling out across multiple Chinese universities, replacing the old system where each school ran its own bespoke entrance exam.

This is close in spirit to Fudan's gate — Chinese ability is assessed directly, not waived because the university has an international brand. But the mechanism is different in an interesting way. Fudan, as of the 2026 cycle, still runs its own in-person interview. NJU is moving toward a standardized national test shared across multiple universities. Whether that makes the process more or less predictable probably depends on how well the CSCA's scoring gets documented once it's actually in use.

03 — Can you actually study here?

International admissions at NJU: what's confirmed and what's not.

Here's what Nanjing University's own admissions pages say, as of the current cycle:

Sources: Nanjing University's own international admissions materials and current-cycle undergraduate/graduate program pages, cross-checked against QS, THE, and ARWU official rankings tables, retrieved mid-2026. Treat every figure above as dated to this cycle specifically — confirm current terms directly with NJU's International Students Office before applying.

04 — What it costs, and what it's like to live here

What a year at NJU actually costs?

The headline numbers for Nanjing University are clear: international undergraduate tuition starts at ¥21,000 (≈$2,917) per year for humanities and ¥24,000 (≈$3,333) for sciences. On-campus dormitory rooms on the Xianlin campus run ¥1,500–3,000 per year, while a city-center one-bedroom outside campus runs about ¥5,000 (≈$694) per month. This page is built from NJU's own published materials and public data, with the author's single 1999 visit woven in as texture, not as the primary source.

Tuition figures from Nanjing University's Overseas Education College (hwxy.nju.edu.cn) official admissions page, cross-referenced against a third-party admissions aggregator (gaokao.cn), retrieved 2026 — supersedes the wider, less specific aggregator range this page previously cited. Dormitory figures from an independent study-in-China guide (qiaoguide.com) describing NJU's two international-student dormitory options. Converted at ¥7.2 = $1.

The university cost calculator rolls these figures up against every other school in this series, side by side.

See how NJU's numbers add up against your own food budget, or against living off campus instead, in the university cost calculator →.

Reference figures only — tuition is now drawn from NJU's own Overseas Education College admissions page; dormitory and meal figures are still compiled from third-party study-in-China guides, not a direct institutional partnership. Treat every number here as a starting estimate to verify with the university's own admissions office before budgeting against it.

One number from that city piece carries straight over here. A city-center one-bedroom in Nanjing runs about 59% of the after-tax median individual wage — a mid-table ratio, meaningfully cheaper than Shanghai's roughly 70% but not among the cheapest cities in this series either. A prospective NJU student should read the city piece for the fuller picture, including how sharply rent scales by district.

05 — The honest brake

What a 1902 founding date doesn't settle

A few things stay open here, not smoothed over:

• Chinese-medium is the default, not a footnote. Every undergraduate major at NJU is taught in Chinese. If you're expecting an English-medium bachelor's track — the way some international-branded Chinese universities offer — confirm this directly before assuming otherwise.
• The CSCA is brand new. As of this writing, the 2026/2027 CSCA requirement had just been announced. A specific passing threshold and detailed scoring rubric weren't yet published in NJU's own materials. This page will not guess at a number NJU hasn't confirmed.
• The open campus is gone. Whatever this page says about NJU historically, the casual physical openness I experienced at a 1999 job fair no longer applies. Visitor access to Chinese campuses generally — NJU included — is tighter today than it was then.
• Degree recognition back home. Whether an NJU degree transfers cleanly into recognition or licensure elsewhere depends entirely on the field and the destination country. This page will not generalize an answer it can't verify for your specific case.
• Visa and residency rules. General direction only, never a guarantee — confirm directly with the university and your own country's authorities.
• Go straight to the source. For current admissions, CSCA details, and program specifics, Nanjing University's own official site and its International Students Office are the authority — not this page, not an agency, not a forum.

06 — The rest of Nanjing's universities

Other universities in Nanjing: Southeast University and Hohai University.

Two other schools round out Nanjing's higher-education scene, each deserving its own full treatment as this guide grows:

These deserve their own full treatment. Coming as this guide grows.