Shanghai is the home of a number of China’s most famous universities, including Fudan, a humanities-oriented institution, and Jiaotong, which specialises in engineering. For locals, the university admissions process is extremely stressful and based solely on nationwide examinations held in July. Luckily, foreigners are exempt from these tests, although they have to pay higher fees to attend. Instead, expats with foreign passports can enrol in certain Chinese universities’ undergraduate or graduate programmes by filling out a simple application form and sending in their school records, passport photos, physical examination record and proof of their language proficiency. Some schools will ask you to designate a sponsor in China, but most often this is optional, and student visas are fairly easy to obtain through the reputable university channels. Chinese students currently pay an average of ¥5,000 per semester, while foreigners can expect to pay around ¥10,000. The majority of expat students, when they finish secondary school, choose to study in the US or Europe, but more and more are choosing to study at a Chinese university for at least a year before transferring.­­­­