Sichuan Normal University — guide for international students

Sichuan Normal University (四川师范大学, SICNU) dates its founding to 1946, when staff and students of National Northeastern University — which had moved to Santai in Sichuan during the war — set up the private Chuanbei Agricultural and Industrial College. Its chronology then runs through a series of mergers: Chuanbei University in Nanchong in 1950; Sichuan Normal College in 1952, formed from Chuanbei University, Chuandong Teachers College and departments transferred from Sichuan University and West China University; the former Chongqing Normal College in 1953; the move to Shizishan in Chengdu in 1956; and departments of the former Chengdu University in 1964. The present name was approved in 1985, doctoral-granting status came in 2006, the Chenglong campus opened in 2008 and the Suining campus in 2023.

SICNU is a Sichuan provincial key university and a designated institution of the national "Basic Capacity Building Project for Universities in Central and Western China". It is not in the national Double First-Class initiative; five of its disciplines are in Sichuan’s provincial equivalent, the Gongga Plan. Three campuses — Shizishan and Chenglong in Chengdu, Suining in Chuanshan District — cover more than 3,300 mu. The university runs 27 schools and 82 undergraduate majors, 31 of them national first-class programme construction sites, and holds 7 doctoral first-level disciplines, 2 professional doctoral categories, 23 master’s first-level disciplines, 20 professional master’s categories and 4 postdoctoral stations. Enrolment is over 41,000 undergraduates and over 7,700 postgraduates, with more than 400 international students and students from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, taught by over 3,200 staff. The library holds close to 6 million volumes and items.

What that means for an international applicant is worth understanding first. SICNU is a teacher-training university for western China, and its international degree provision sits in one unit — the School of International Chinese Education (国际中文教育学院), called the College of International Education until it was renamed, a name still used on its English site. The school says it has taught more than ten thousand international students at all levels over 35 years. The degree guide it publishes covers a single major, Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (汉语国际教育, TCSOL). No English-taught degree is published, and no admission guide exists for the other 81 undergraduate majors, so if you want to study chemistry, mathematics or education here you must ask the school rather than infer it from the university’s size.

On international measures, SICNU does not appear in the QS World University Rankings, so there is no QS position to quote. The Center for World University Rankings places it 1,270th of 21,291 institutions worldwide in its 2026 edition and 240th in China. Five disciplines stood in the ESI global top 1% as of the university’s May 2024 announcement.

International admission is handled by the School of International Chinese Education on the Shizishan campus, and what it publishes is narrower than the university as a whole. The degree guide covers one major — Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (汉语国际教育, TCSOL) — at bachelor’s (four years, HSK 4) and master’s (two years, HSK 5) level, both taught in Chinese. A professional doctorate in International Chinese Language Education exists here, authorised in 2024, and the school lists a doctoral scholarship category, but no doctoral admission guide, tuition or requirement list is published. No English-taught degree is published at any level, and no admission guide exists for the other undergraduate majors. Non-degree Chinese language study is separate and rolling. There is no online portal: the school publishes a downloadable application form (外国留学生入学申请表), and lists one admissions email and two phone numbers. It publishes no application fee and no age limit for degree study — the language programme, by contrast, states 18 to 60.

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 Sichuan Normal University 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.

One scheme accounts for essentially all published funding at SICNU: the International Chinese Language Teachers Scholarship, awarded through designated host institutions. SICNU is one, publishes its own guidelines each spring — the 2026 edition on 3 March 2026 — and accepts five categories. It covers tuition, accommodation, comprehensive medical insurance and a monthly living allowance, and the university provides free double rooms to holders. Applications are not made to SICNU directly: obtain a recommendation from a recommending institution, then apply online at cis.chinese.cn from 1 March 2026. Note what SICNU does not publish. Its scholarship page lists only these 2026 guidelines and a Confucius Institute Scholarship notice from 2014 — there is no Chinese Government Scholarship guide, no Sichuan provincial scholarship guide and no university-funded scholarship anywhere on its pages. If someone tells you SICNU has a CSC place for you, ask the school to confirm it in writing.

Research at SICNU is organised around the disciplines a normal university is built on — Chinese language and literature, education, psychology and history — alongside a science cluster in chemistry, materials, computing and the environment that has pushed five subjects into the ESI global top 1%. The university lists 26 ministerial and provincial key laboratories and research platforms, among them the Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Land Resources Evaluation and Monitoring in Southwest China. Its doctoral authorisations map the same shape: Chinese Language and Literature and Education from 2011, Mathematics from 2018, Psychology, Chinese History, Physics and Chemistry from 2021, and professional doctorates in Education and in International Chinese Language Education from 2024. The strength closest to your likely programme is in language, literature and Chinese language education rather than in the laboratory sciences.

SICNU’s international work runs on two tracks: the Office of International Exchange and Cooperation manages partnerships, staff mobility and the Confucius Institutes, while the School of International Chinese Education teaches the students who come. The university’s two official counts of its partnerships do not agree, and it is worth knowing both — the university profile page states relationships with more than 140 institutions and research bodies in over 30 countries and regions, while the international exchange page states 110 institutions in 30 countries and regions. Neither says which supersedes the other, so quote the range. Student exchange runs with Yonsei, Ewha Womans and Chung-Ang universities in Korea, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Macau University of Science and Technology and Chinese Culture University in Taiwan, alongside 3+1 dual-degree routes with UK partners.

SICNU counts nearly 800,000 graduates across its 80 years and describes their contribution in terms of raising the quality of basic education in western China — most go into teaching in Sichuan and neighbouring provinces. For an international student on the TCSOL track that orientation is the point: the degree is a teaching qualification for Chinese as a second language, and the scholarship that funds most international students here expects a commitment to Chinese language education. The university publishes no employment rate or destinations breakdown for international graduates, so ask the school what its own graduates have gone on to do.

International students are based on the Shizishan campus in Jinjiang District, Chengdu — the oldest of the three campuses, occupied since 1956, and the one housing the School of International Chinese Education, the HSK test centre and the King Sejong Institute. It sits inside the city rather than on its edge, which makes Chengdu genuinely accessible; Chenglong and Suining carry much of the domestic undergraduate teaching. The school runs a visible programme of activities: a Chinese song competition each spring, which in April 2026 brought ten finalist acts from Vietnam, Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Laos, Myanmar and Djibouti onto the Shizishan stage, and field trips such as the March 2026 climb of Beifengshan, which took 39 students from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Egypt and Vietnam out of the city. Between them those events are a fair picture of the cohort: small, and drawn mainly from Central Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and Pakistan.

Accommodation

Dining

The university publishes no canteen, meal-plan or food-budget information for international students on either its Chinese or its English pages — the English site’s Facilities & Transportation page carries no entries. The enrolment guides quote tuition, insurance and a room charge and nothing for meals, so food is a separate cost on top of the RMB 3,000 half-year room fee. Ask the school which canteens international students use and whether halal or vegetarian provision exists, because it does not say so in writing.

Facilities

Reach the School of International Chinese Education (国际中文教育学院), Sichuan Normal University — the single office handling international student admission, the Chinese language programme, the International Chinese Language Teachers Scholarship and the HSK test centre. It was called the College of International Education until it was renamed, and that name still appears on its English site. for questions about applications, documents, scholarships and arrival. Type university programs and offices are based on campus in Chengdu.