Shanghai University — guide for international students

Shanghai University (上海大学, SHU) dates itself to 23 October 1922. Its own history pages describe that first Shanghai University as “中国共产党主导创办并实际领导的第一所正规大学” — the first regular university founded and actually led by the Chinese Communist Party — with Sun Yat-sen, Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong among its trustees and Yu Youren, Qu Qiubai and Deng Zhongxia among its leaders. The writer Ding Ling, the poet Dai Wangshu and the later PRC president Yang Shangkun all passed through it, and the university still quotes the saying it earned in the 1920s: Peking University in the north of the May Fourth era, Shanghai University in the south of the May Thirtieth era.

The modern institution is a rebuild, not a continuation. Shanghai’s municipal government re-established Shanghai University in May 1983 by merging six schools, and the present university was formed in May 1994 by merging four of them: Shanghai University of Technology (founded 1960), Shanghai University of Science and Technology (1958), the then Shanghai University, and Shanghai Higher College of Science and Technology (1959). The scientist Qian Weichang served as its president from 1994 to 2010. If you are comparing Shanghai institutions, note that SHU is a distinct university from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and from ShanghaiTech University; it is the municipally run comprehensive university that entered the national Project 211 and is now in the Double First-Class construction list.

SHU is laid out in what it calls a “一体两翼” — one body, two wings — pattern: the main Baoshan campus at 99 Shangda Road, plus the Yanchang campus in Jing’an District and the Jiading campus, across a site of 1.8 million square metres with 1.51 million square metres of buildings. It runs 31 schools and colleges, 82 undergraduate majors, 28 first-level doctoral authorisations plus nine self-established interdisciplinary doctoral points, 42 first-level master’s authorisations, seven doctoral and 30 master’s professional degree categories, and 24 postdoctoral research stations. Enrolment, on data the university dates to March 2026, is 19,687 full-time undergraduates, 19,987 graduate students, 68 preparatory students and 19,868 adult-education students.

For international students the headline figure is 3,416, from 146 countries and regions — a number both the university introduction page and the International Affairs Office publish. How many of those are degree students depends on which page you read: the university introduction, with data to March 2026, says 2,375 国际学历生 (international degree students), while the International Affairs Office page, with data to November 2025, says 2,280. The Ministry of Education has named SHU a 来华留学示范基地 — a demonstration base for education of international students in China — and the College of International Education says the university has taught more than 30,000 international students from over 120 countries since 1966.

Shanghai University admits international students to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees and to a long list of non-degree programs, all through one portal at apply.shu.edu.cn, with a non-refundable application fee of RMB 500. Three things about SHU’s requirements catch applicants out. First, the Chinese-language threshold is set by subject, not by degree level: HSK 5 with 180 points is asked of science, engineering, economics, management and art applicants at undergraduate, master’s and doctoral level alike, humanities applicants need HSK 5 with 210 at every level, and only the Chinese-language and teaching-Chinese undergraduate majors sit at HSK 4 with 180. Second, undergraduate applicants must supply a China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA) transcript — it is on the undergraduate document list and on no other. Third, most master’s and doctoral applicants need a prospective supervisor at SHU to accept them before applying; the exceptions named on the portal are the School of Management, the School of Economics, the MBA Center and SILC Business School at master’s level, and the first two of those at doctoral level. Age is handled unevenly, and the admission limits are not the funding limits. Undergraduate applicants under 18 are not excluded but must file a Guarantee Statement; doctoral applicants must be no older than 55; non-degree applicants must be 18 to 55. The scholarship caps are far tighter — under 25, 35 and 40 for bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral applicants — so you can be admissible and still be outside every funding window. All dates below are for the 2026–2027 academic year, the cycle Shanghai University’s current admission guides describe.

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 Shanghai 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.

Shanghai University runs four funding routes on its scholarships page, and they do not all open to the same people or close on the same day. The two government schemes have the tightest deadlines — the Chinese Government Scholarship closes on 15 February 2026 and the Shanghai Government Scholarship on 30 April 2026, both well before the 30 June application deadline — and both apply age caps (under 25 for a bachelor’s applicant to the Shanghai scheme, under 35 for master’s, under 40 for doctoral) that are stricter than SHU’s own admission rules. The Chinese Government Scholarship at SHU is postgraduate-only: there is no undergraduate channel on it. The one piece of good news for self-funded applicants is that the university’s own award needs no separate form — SHU says applicants for the other scholarships are automatically considered for it. Every scholarship application still goes through apply.shu.edu.cn and still carries the RMB 500 application fee.

Shanghai University’s research strengths sit where its 1994 merger left them: metallurgy and advanced materials, optical fibre and communications, mechatronics and marine robotics, new display technology, environmental engineering and the social sciences. Its flagship platform is the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Special Steel (省部共建高品质特殊钢冶金与制备国家重点实验室), a province-ministry co-built national key laboratory, alongside a national cultivation base for special optical fibre and optical access networks and a national international science and technology cooperation base in nano-composite functional materials. Two official pages count the national key laboratories differently, and the difference is worth knowing before you quote a figure: the university introduction page, with data to March 2026, says four 全国重点实验室, while the research overview page says three. Both are cited below, and neither page states which supersedes the other. The faculty includes four full-time academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering plus one foreign member of the CAE, 105 national-level mid-career leading talents and 95 national-level young talents.

Shanghai University’s International Affairs Office reports institutional exchange relationships with 271 universities and research institutions in 58 countries and regions across five continents, on data to November 2025, naming the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the National University of Singapore, the University of Leeds and RWTH Aachen among its partners. What distinguishes SHU from most Chinese universities of its rank, though, is not the size of that network but how much of it is built into the university itself: four Sino-foreign cooperative schools operate as SHU faculties, a fifth cooperative master’s runs with a French university, five Confucius Institutes run abroad, and the university operates its own campus in Tokyo.

Shanghai University feeds graduates into the Shanghai labour market at scale — its own introduction page counts 10,757 graduates in the class of 2025, including 684 graduate students on directed-employment contracts — and runs a central employment information service at job.shu.edu.cn, though that system needs a university login rather than being a public careers site. Be clear-eyed about what is not published: Shanghai University does not put employment rates, salary figures or graduate destinations for its international cohort on its public pages, so treat any such number on an agency site as unsourced. What SHU does document is the alumni side — an alumni association with an electronic alumni card, regional chapters at home and abroad, an alumni magazine and an innovation competition that puts investment in front of alumni founders — and the four Sino-foreign schools inside the university, which are the most direct route to internationally recognised qualifications and employer networks.

Shanghai University is a city university in the plain sense — all three campuses are inside Shanghai, and the main Baoshan campus at 99 Shangda Road is the address the admissions office, the College of International Education and the switchboard all use. The site runs to 1.8 million square metres with 1.51 million square metres of buildings; the library alone occupies 79,100 square metres, holds 4.586 million volumes and seats 5,897 readers. What makes the cost picture unusual is the spread in accommodation: the admissions portal quotes a single room at RMB 51,000 a year against RMB 12,700 for a bed in a four-bed room, a four-fold difference that will matter more to your budget than the gap between one tuition band and the next. Underneath, the university’s fee-standard page charges rooms per bed per day — RMB 25 to RMB 140 by campus and room type — with electricity billed separately.

Accommodation

Dining

Shanghai University does not publish canteen locations or meal prices for international students on its public pages, so budget for food out of the general living allowance: the university estimates total living expenses at around RMB 35,000 a year on top of tuition and accommodation. Medical and accident insurance is compulsory and separately priced at RMB 400 for six months or RMB 800 for a full year.

Facilities

Reach the International Student Admissions Office, College of International Education (国际教育学院), Shanghai University for questions about applications, documents, scholarships and arrival. Type university programs and offices are based on campus in Shanghai.