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
A 1902 normal school that became one of China's oldest comprehensive universities
Nanjing University traces its lineage 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 passed through several names and reorganizations (Liangjiang Normal School, Nanjing Higher Normal School, National Central University) before being renamed National Nanjing University in 1949 and, the following year, simply Nanjing University — a naming history that runs almost exactly parallel to the city's own habit of losing and regaining its bigger title.
Today NJU sits inside 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 alongside 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 spans 40 schools and departments across four campuses, with roughly 22 disciplines ranked in the global top 1% by ESI, and is particularly strong in Chinese language and literature, history, chemistry, physics, computer science, and geosciences.
Of its 43,643 students, roughly 1,396 are international — a considerably smaller international footprint than Fudan's, and a figure I'm treating as a clean, sourced enrollment count rather than the blended student-visit figure the Fudan page had to flag as ambiguous.
02 — The gate, in plain terms
Chinese-medium instruction for every undergraduate major, a new national test arriving in 2026/2027, and HSK tiers for graduate programs
Nanjing University's own current undergraduate admissions materials state plainly 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. From the 2026/2027 academic year, international undergraduate applicants also need to submit a score from the China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA), a national-level test introduced across multiple Chinese universities as a more standardized replacement for each school running its own bespoke entrance assessment.
At the graduate level, the language gate is more legible because it's published as a threshold rather than assessed through an interview: NJU's Chinese-taught master's programs list HSK 5 or above for liberal arts and business programs, and HSK 4 or above for science programs and its own Chinese-language program. English-taught graduate programs don't require Chinese proficiency at all. The undergraduate gate is a national test; the graduate gate is a published HSK number — either way, Chinese-medium is the default, not the exception.
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 for an applicant probably depends on how well the CSCA's scoring gets documented once it's actually in use.
03 — Can you actually study here?
What NJU's own current admissions materials say — and what I couldn't confirm
Here is what Nanjing University's own admissions pages actually say, as of the current cycle:
| Question | What NJU's own current materials say |
|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree, all majors | Chinese-medium instruction (中文授课). No separate English-medium undergraduate track. From the 2026/2027 academic year, applicants must submit a CSCA (China Scholastic Competency Assessment) score as part of the application. |
| Master's programs, Chinese-taught | HSK 5 or above required for liberal arts and business programs; HSK 4 or above for science programs and NJU's own Chinese-language program. |
| Master's / doctoral programs, English-taught | No Chinese-language proficiency requirement, per NJU's published admissions instructions. |
| Campuses | Four in total — Gulou (historic main campus, city center), Xianlin (the university's international/graduate campus, eastern Nanjing), Pukou (northern bank of the Yangtze), and a fourth teaching/research site; exact current program-to-campus assignment varies by school. |
| International student body | ≈1,396 international students out of 43,643 total, per NJU's own reported figures — a clean headcount, not a blended visit-based figure. |
| Specific CSCA score threshold for undergraduate admission | Not confirmed — the CSCA requirement was newly announced for the 2026/2027 cycle at time of writing, and a published minimum score band was not yet available from NJU's own materials. |
| Exact current tuition figures by program | Not confirmed to a single, dated, program-by-program figure — third-party aggregators cite a broad ¥21,000–¥54,000/year range, but this page won't present a borrowed number as NJU's own without direct confirmation. |
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.
A personal data point, clearly marked as one
My one data point from NJU itself is from January 1999, and it isn't about admissions at all: a Nanjing job fair happened to route a group of out-of-town graduates straight through its gates, and nobody stopped us. That tells you something true about how open Chinese university campuses briefly were to casual visitors a quarter-century ago — and nothing at all about the actual, test-and-threshold-based admissions process described in the table above, which a job fair walk-through could never have tested.
04 — What it costs, and what it's like to live here
What an NJU year actually costs
| Item | RMB/year | USD/year |
|---|---|---|
| Int'l undergraduate tuitionvaries widely by program | 21,000–54,000 | ≈$2,917–7,500 |
| On-campus dormitory, Xianlin campus | ≈1,500–3,000 | ≈$208–417 |
| On-campus dormitory, Gulou campuspriced per day | ≈50–65/day | ≈$7–9/day |
| Campus canteen meals | Not confirmed | — |
Tuition range from a third-party admissions aggregator (careers360.com) — wide enough to treat as a rough bracket, not a specific quote. Dormitory figures from an independent study-in-China guide (qiaoguide.com) describing NJU's two international-student dormitory options. Converted at ¥7.2 = $1.
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 — compiled from published fee schedules and third-party study-in-China aggregators, not from 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; this site will replace these with confirmed, sourced figures if and when a direct relationship with the school exists.
One number from that city piece is directly relevant 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 into a clean answer:
- Chinese-medium is the default, not a footnote. Every undergraduate major at NJU is taught in Chinese. An applicant expecting an English-medium bachelor's track the way some international-branded Chinese universities offer should 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 were not 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 during 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.
I walked through this campus once, on a job-fair afternoon in 1999, because nothing was stopping me. I never went back to test whether I still could. That's not a complaint about Nanjing University specifically — it's the honest, dated distance I'm writing this page from.
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06 — The rest of Nanjing's universities
NJU isn't the only one
Two other schools round out Nanjing's higher-education scene, each deserving its own full treatment as this guide grows:
Southeast University
Founded in 1902 from the same Sanjiang Normal School lineage as NJU before the two split into separate institutions, Southeast is a Double First-Class flagship and one of China's leading schools for architecture, civil engineering, and biomedical engineering — its Sipailou campus is itself a preserved early-20th-century architectural landmark in central Nanjing.
Hohai University
Founded in 1915, Hohai is China's oldest and most specialized university for water resources and hydraulic engineering — a genuinely distinctive niche given how much of Chinese infrastructure history runs through river and dam engineering, and a direct thematic echo of Nanjing's own Yangtze-riverside geography.
These deserve their own full treatment. Coming as this guide grows.
07 — Questions people actually ask
Quick answers
When was Nanjing University founded?
In 1902, as a normal school — making it one of China's oldest comprehensive universities, and today a member of the C9 League.
How does Nanjing University rank internationally?
103rd in the world in the QS World University Rankings, =62nd in the 2026 Times Higher Education rankings, and 75th in the 2025 Academic Ranking of World Universities.
What language are Nanjing University's programs taught in?
Chinese-medium instruction for every undergraduate major, with a new national test arriving in 2026/2027 and HSK tiers required for graduate programs.
Has the author of this page visited Nanjing University?
Yes, once — the author walked its gates for a 1999 job fair, a personal data point disclosed and clearly marked as limited rather than presented as ongoing familiarity.
Where can I find Nanjing's on-campus dormitory costs?
On-campus dormitory rooms at the Xianlin campus run approximately ¥1,500–3,000/year, per the university's own published figures — see the full cost table on this page for tuition alongside it.
If you're considering it
Before you apply to Nanjing University
- Confirm the CSCA requirement and threshold directly with NJU's International Students Office — this is a newly introduced test as of the 2026/2027 cycle, and details will firm up over time.
- Budget for Nanjing's cost of living honestly — the city piece linked below explains the roughly 59% rent-to-wage ratio and how sharply it scales by district.
- Ask about degree recognition in your home country and field before you commit, rather than after you arrive.
- Treat every admissions number in this guide as dated the moment it's published. Confirm current figures, deadlines, and language requirements directly with the university.