Nanjing University of Science and Technology — guide for international students

Nanjing University of Science and Technology (南京理工大学, NJUST) dates itself to 1953, and its own timeline is worth reading because the university has carried five names. The By the Numbers page on the English site sets them out: the Department of Artillery Engineering of the PLA’s Military Engineering Institute in Harbin (September 1953 – June 1960), the Artillery Engineering Institute (June 1960 – March 1966), the East China Institute of Engineering (April 1966 – August 1984), the East China Institute of Technology (November 1984 – March 1993), and Nanjing University of Science and Technology from April 1993. The school relocated from Harbin to Nanjing in 1962, and that ordnance lineage still shapes it: its strongest disciplines are mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and energetic materials, optical engineering, control and computer science.

NJUST is a public university administered by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology — one of seven MIIT universities — and is co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Jiangsu Provincial Government. It entered Project 211 in 1995 and the national Double First-Class initiative in September 2017. There are two campuses: the main Nanjing campus at No. 200 Xiaolingwei Street in Xuanwu District, which sits south of Zijin Mountain with the Ming dynasty city wall to its west, and a second campus in Jiangyin, also in Jiangsu. The English Overview page puts the two together at 288 hectares.

The official pages do not all count the university the same way, and it is worth knowing which figure came from where. The 2026 undergraduate, postgraduate and Lanshan guides say NJUST has 21 schools, more than 3,700 faculty members and over 30,000 students; the 2026 Chinese Government Scholarship guides, on the same site, say 21 schools and more than 2,400 full-time faculty; the English Overview page says around 2,400 full-time faculty and over 35,000 enrolled students. On international enrolment the guides say more than 800 students from over 90 countries, the Overview page says more than 750, and the 2026 Summer School page says more than 800 from over 100 countries. None of the pages explains the differences, so treat the ranges as ranges.

Academically the university groups itself into three clusters — Mechanical and Equipment, Information and Control, and Chemical Engineering and Materials — alongside science, economics, management, humanities, law and design. Eleven disciplines sit in the global top 1% of Clarivate’s Essential Science Indicators according to the undergraduate, postgraduate and Lanshan guides (the Silk Road guide says twelve), with Engineering, Materials Science, Computer Science and Chemistry in the top 0.1%. The Lanshan guide names the disciplines NJUST ranks highest in the national discipline evaluation: Category A in Chemical Engineering and Technology, Control Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Optical Engineering, and Category B+ in Materials Science and Engineering, Computer Science and Technology, Software Engineering and Environmental Science and Engineering.

NJUST admits international students to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, and to non-degree Chinese language, summer school and visiting-student routes. Everything degree-related goes through one online system, https://njust.17gz.org (the same platform is reachable as admission.njust.edu.cn), and the application fee is RMB 500 at every level, paid inside that system and never refunded. The change that matters most for the 2026 intake is at undergraduate level: every applicant must sit the China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA), the standardised entrance test run by the China Scholarship Council at csca.cn, in the subjects their intended major requires, and submit the score report. You may apply first, uploading your CSCA registration proof or candidate number as a temporary explanation, but the official report must reach NJUST before its deadline or the application cannot proceed to admission. The CSCA is undergraduate-only — master’s and doctoral admission is judged on academic background, research plan, language and supervisor fit. One procedural point catches applicants out: the system allows only one programme type per level of study, so you cannot submit a self-funded and a Lanshan Scholarship application side by side; NJUST ranks all applicants at a level together and may upgrade a strong self-funded applicant to a Lanshan award during internal review. The dates below come from the 2026 guides, published on 20–21 November 2025; no 2027 edition had appeared when this page was checked.

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 Science and Technology 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.

NJUST funds international students through three channels: its own Lanshan Scholarship, two Chinese Government Scholarship routes it hosts as agency number 10288, and self-funding. The Lanshan Scholarship is the one most applicants will use, and it is unusual in being tiered rather than all-or-nothing — at undergraduate level there are four categories, from a full ride with a stipend down to a dormitory waiver alone. Two procedural points matter. First, you may select only one programme type per level, so you apply either self-funded or Lanshan, not both; NJUST may upgrade a strong self-funded applicant to a Lanshan award during internal review, with the offer letter stating the final category. Second, scholarships may not overlap at the same level, and a Chinese Government Scholarship win triggers a no-double-full-funding adjustment. Every award is reviewed annually on academic performance, research progress, attendance and conduct, and can be downgraded, suspended or cancelled. The Silk Road guide adds a useful fallback: applicants not awarded the CSC scholarship may be considered for the Lanshan Scholarship instead.

NJUST describes itself through its platforms: the 2026 admission guides state that it operates 11 national key laboratories and 63 provincial or ministerial-level research platforms, and that it has received 111 National Science and Technology Awards to date. Research is concentrated where the ordnance-engineering history left it — energetic materials and chemical engineering, mechanical and high-end equipment, optical engineering and optoelectronic information, electromagnetic and microwave technology, pattern recognition and intelligent systems, and advanced materials. An older About NJUST page on the same site puts annual research funding above RMB 1.5 billion; that page is undated and its other figures have since been superseded, so treat the funding number as indicative. For a prospective doctoral student the more useful signal is the supervisor directory the Graduate School publishes at gs.njust.edu.cn/dsjs/list.htm, which the guides tell you to consult before writing your research plan.

NJUST’s English Overview page states that the university has cooperative relationships with over 200 institutions in 35 countries and regions. Its flagship joint ventures are European: the Sino-French Engineer School, run with the École Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Metz on a 4+2 model to train CTI-certified engineers, and a Sino-British 3+1 industrial design program established with Coventry University in 2013. The university also runs the Confucius Institute at Gomel State University in Belarus. Day to day this reaches students through the School of International Education, which has more than twenty years of experience and hosts the whole international cohort — more than 800 students from over 90 countries. Its short formats are genuinely mixed rather than nominally so: the 2026 summer school put 30 international and 20 Chinese students in one cohort.

NJUST does not publish employment or salary statistics for its international graduates, so treat any such number on an agency site as unsourced. What it does describe, consistently across the 2026 guides, is a service rather than an outcome: career counselling and internship guidance, industry guest lectures, an alumni network and partner collaborations, with the Yangtze River Delta’s manufacturing and electronics industry on the doorstep and a curriculum built around what NJUST calls an ‘AI +, Innovation +, Practice +, Chinese +’ system with internship bases attached. The alumni page on the international site is a landing page rather than a service directory. The named alumni below are those Wikipedia lists for the university; NJUST’s own English pages publish no alumni roll.

International students live on the Nanjing campus at 200 Xiaolingwei Street, on the south side of Zijin Mountain with the Ming dynasty city wall to the west and woods, lakes and rivers around it. Housing is cheap by Chinese big-city standards, but capacity is the constraint rather than price: the Chinese Language Program page states that because dormitory resources are limited, students who have never previously studied or worked in China get the chance to apply for an on-campus dormitory, and those who have should plan to rent an apartment. Undergraduates and master’s students share quad rooms; doctoral students get double rooms. The School of International Education photographs both on its Accommodation page but publishes no floor plan, room inventory or building name, so ask the accommodation desk (Office 223) what is available for your intake before you assume you have a bed.

Accommodation

Dining

Students eat in the university dining halls, which the Summer School page lists among the facilities international participants may use alongside the library, innovation labs and sports facilities. NJUST does not publish canteen prices, only a meal budget — and its two pages disagree: the 2026 undergraduate, postgraduate and Lanshan guides all estimate about RMB 20,000 a year for food, while the Fees & Payment page on the same site says about RMB 10,000. Budget towards the higher figure.

Facilities

Reach the School of International Education (SIE), Nanjing University of Science and Technology — Admission Office, SIE Office 201 for questions about applications, documents, scholarships and arrival. Type university programs and offices are based on campus in Nanjing.