Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics — guide for international students

Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (南京航空航天大学, NUAA) was created in October 1952 and is, in the words of its own profile page, “one of the first batch of aviation higher-education institutions founded by New China”. It is administered by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which ties its teaching and research closely to the aviation, aerospace and civil-aviation industries. It entered Project 211 in 1996 and the Double First-Class sequence in 2017, with three disciplines selected in the second round of that list: aeronautical and astronautical science and technology, mechanics, and control science and engineering.

NUAA is a multi-campus university, and which campus you end up on shapes your daily life. The profile page names three — Minggugong (the Ming Palace campus, in the old city), Jiangjun Road (Jiangning District, in the southern suburbs) and Tianmu Lake (in Liyang) — plus an International Innovation Harbour, with a Yangzijiang campus under construction, together covering 5,284 mu. International students are administered from the College of International Education at No. 29 Jiangjun Avenue, Jiangning District, and its housing page lists international dormitories on Jiangjun Road (Building 32 and the Waizhuan / Foreign Experts Building) and on Minggugong (Building B4).

As of March 2026 the profile records 38,460 students — 19,923 undergraduates, 13,569 master’s students, 3,835 doctoral students and 1,133 international students — and 4,162 staff, of whom 2,630 are full-time teachers, including 787 doctoral supervisors and 4 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The university runs 25 schools and 243 research institutions and offers 68 undergraduate majors, 32 first-level master’s and 20 first-level doctoral authorisation points, and 17 post-doctoral research stations.

International education has its own chronology: NUAA was cleared to accept foreign students in 1995; the College of International Education was founded in 2005 and opened its first fully English-taught bachelor’s degree, Aeronautical Engineering, the same year; it became a Chinese Government Scholarship host institution in 2009 and gained self-directed CSC recruitment in 2011. Two official figures for the international cohort circulate and they count different things: the profile’s 1,133 is a March 2026 headcount, while the college’s “年均约1400名” is an annual average measured at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2020). The college also records 118 source countries cumulatively, degree students at 80% of the international cohort and postgraduates at 35%, 379 courses taught in English, and more than 3,000 international graduates trained, over 1,300 of them from more than 50 Belt and Road countries.

NUAA admits international students to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees and to several non-degree routes, and everything goes through one online system at https://nj.at0086.cn/StuApplication/Login.aspx. One requirement sets undergraduate entry apart: the 2026 undergraduate brochure states that “CSCA test is mandatory for every application” — the China Scholastic Competency Assessment, taken at www.csca.cn, with Physics and Maths required for the engineering majors and Maths for International Business, and the score to be supplemented before 30 May 2026. The postgraduate guide never mentions the CSCA; it asks instead for a supervisor acceptance letter and a study plan signed by that supervisor, which in practice means finding a supervisor before you apply. Age limits are set per level and the undergraduate band is tight: 17–25 for bachelor’s applicants (minors must supply a certificate of a guardian holding Nanjing residency), under 35 for master’s and under 40 for doctoral applicants. Language requirements differ by level too — English-taught undergraduate entry asks for IELTS 6.0, TOEFL 80 or an equivalent English proficiency letter, while the postgraduate guide sets the TOEFL bar ten points lower at 70 for the same IELTS 6.0. NUAA had not published a 2027 international admission brochure when these pages were checked, so every date below belongs to the 2026 cycle.

Degree programs

Select a degree level to see tuition, duration and entry requirements.

Non-degree programs

Documents to prepare

Application timeline

These are the dates Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics published for the 2026 intake. That cycle has closed. Use them as a guide to when each step falls in the year, and check the official pages for the 2027 dates before you plan around them.

NUAA’s 2026 brochures name four funding routes for new international students — the Chinese Government Scholarship, the Jiangsu Government Scholarship, the Nanjing Government Scholarship and the university’s own Fly-High Scholarship — and the college website adds two Chinese Government Scholarship channels NUAA recruits for itself, the University Program (Type B) and the Silk Road Program. Two practical points are worth knowing. First, Fly-High has no separate form or deadline: it is decided during admission and “the results are directly indicated in the admission letter”, which is why both brochures tell you to apply early. Second, Fly-High is a first-year award only — from the second year you compete for the NUAA Academic Scholarship on your grades, a different scheme with GPA thresholds and quotas. NUAA publishes no eligibility rules, amounts or deadlines of its own for the Jiangsu and Nanjing schemes, only the coverage lines inside the admission brochures, so confirm those two with the College of International Education. Separately, the Chinese Language Center pays a small HSK reward: RMB 500 to undergraduates passing HSK Level 4 or above and RMB 400 to graduate students passing Level 3 or above.

NUAA’s research is defence- and aerospace-facing, and the university says so plainly: in the national defence science and technology field it has taken part in the pre-research, technical problem-solving and experimental research of “almost all of China’s important aviation models”, and several of its technologies have been applied in the Chang’e lunar programme. Its profile lists a run of national firsts it contributed — the first unmanned large target drone, the first unmanned nuclear-test sampling aircraft, the first plateau unmanned aircraft, the first unmanned helicopter and the first micro air vehicle. Behind that sit 243 research institutions and 12 national-level research platforms, among them the National Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures and the National Key Laboratory of Helicopter Dynamics, which admits its own international master’s and doctoral students in aerospace science and technology. The figures here come from the university profile, with data as of March 2026.

NUAA’s profile states that it has built long-term, stable cooperative relationships with more than three hundred well-known foreign universities and research institutions, and that it initiated three international alliances of its own: the International Helicopter Education Alliance, the “Air Silk Road” alliance and the “International Grey System” science and education alliance. It holds an International Joint Laboratory approved by the Ministry of Education, and in 2025 it opened its first Ministry of Education-approved Sino-foreign cooperative institution, the NUAA London International College, run with Birkbeck, University of London. Day-to-day international affairs are split between two offices: the International Cooperation Office handles partnerships, foreign experts, conferences and research collaboration, while the College of International Education handles admission, teaching and welfare for international students.

NUAA’s graduate story is a national one rather than an international one, and the difference matters. The university says it has trained more than 210,000 senior specialists since 1952, and that 26 academicians of the two national academies have come from its alumni body, along with dozens of provincial- and ministerial-level officials and generals; its own reporting on the C919 names two of those graduates by entry year. For international students specifically, though, NUAA publishes no placement rate, salary data or employer list on its English pages: the College of International Education’s student pages show occasional career webinars rather than a careers service, and the alumni infrastructure it does publish is three overseas alumni associations. Treat any employment statistic for NUAA’s international graduates that you find on a third-party site as unsourced unless the college confirms it.

International students are administered from the College of International Education at No. 29 Jiangjun Avenue, Jiangning District — the Jiangjun Road campus, in Nanjing’s southern suburbs. The college’s housing page lists three international residence buildings across two campuses: Building 32 and the Waizhuan (Foreign Experts) Building on Jiangjun Road, and Building B4 on Minggugong in the old city. Rooms come as singles, doubles and multi-person rooms; undergraduates mostly take doubles and multi-person rooms, graduate students doubles or singles. Each campus has its own campus hospital — in the south-west corner of the stadium at Minggugong, west of the north gate at Jiangjun Road — and comprehensive medical insurance costs RMB 800 a year.

Accommodation

Dining

The college names one dining hall specifically for international students: the Minzu Canteen (民族餐厅) in Building B61 on the Jiangjun Road campus. NUAA does not publish opening hours, meal prices or a halal certification statement for it on its English pages, so check on arrival; the college’s own budgeting estimate is RMB 600–1,500 per person per month for food.

Facilities

Reach the College of International Education, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics for questions about applications, documents, scholarships and arrival. Type university programs and offices are based on campus in Nanjing.