Inside China’s top computer science university training the next generation of AI engineers

• Tsinghua University is China’s top computer science school, attracting the country’s top students.

• Students and experts who spoke to BI said the grind culture led to long study hours and peer pressure.

• For many, studying at Tsinghua opens the door to top AI roles and careers.

Felix Gan is a second-year PhD student. computer science student says he lives effectively “996” routine at Beijing Tsinghua University. Seven days a week, their days begin around 8 a.m. and leave campus around 9 p.m.

He devotes many of these hours to his research, but he’s not just working toward a degree. After graduation, Gan hopes to develop technology that he can turn into a product and establish a startup.

This level of intensity is the norm on campus, where writing a single thesis is not enough to stand out. Some students write several.

Tsinghua is China’s top computer science university and is often compared to Harvard University or Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students prepare for front row seats global artificial intelligence race.

As China’s ambitions in artificial intelligence grow, so does the pressure on engineers and researchers in training.

Many say the payoff from years of hard training is worth it. Passing through Tsinghua may mean: a golden ticket He joins the ranks of China’s tech elite, a network that includes Wang Xing, co-founder and CEO of Meituan, one of China’s largest on-demand services companies. Other notable Tsinghua graduates include Chinese president Xi Jinping and his predecessor Hu Jintao.

According to market intelligence platform Tracxn, Tsinghua graduates have founded more than 1,000 companies, including more than a dozen unicorns.

Normalized ‘torment’ culture

The university is among the most selective universities in China. To get in, students need top scores on the Gaokao, China’s national university entrance exam.

Only 0.05% of those who took the Gaokao exam in 2024 were able to get into Tsinghua or Peking University; That’s roughly one in 2,000 students, according to national data cited by Chinese media.

Tsinghua’s undergraduate students largely come from mainland China. There are more international students at graduate schools such as Shenzhen International Graduate School of Tsinghua University. Located about 2,400 miles south of Beijing, the graduate school brings together Chinese and international students in research-focused, industry-related programs.

Daniyar Kuzekov, a graduate student studying data science and information technology at Tsinghua’s Shenzhen Institute of Graduate Studies, said most of the students he met either had extraordinary backgrounds or worked relentlessly.

“I feel the pressure they had before, I feel how hard they worked to get to this level,” he added.

Kuzekov, who is from Kazakhstan, explained that he locked in a 22-hour coding marathon for his thesis and worked with an artificial intelligence assistant on an article about DeepSeek.

Students told Business Insider that a culture of grinding comes with learning at the AI ​​edge. For computer science undergraduate Pau Tong Lin Xu, working late into the night and studying for seven to eight hours a day is normal.

“You learn a lot, but it takes a huge amount of work, and sometimes that can leave you with little time to do other things or explore your own ideas,” he said.

He described peer pressure as a “double-edged sword”; motivating but sometimes overwhelming.

Tsinghua’s culture reflects a broader trend in China often described as “revolution”; a cycle of intense competition where everyone works harder to keep up.

Some young Chinese they were pushed back “lying flat”, I refuse to grind. But for students at elite universities, giving up is rarely an option.

Early publishing, attending labs, basically coding

Beyond day jobs, many computer science majors join research labs early and work on academic papers.

Some undergraduates go one step further and aim to publish at top-level computer science conferences; This is a sign of research ability when applying to graduate programs.

Zhixun Tan, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering in 2016 and works as a software engineer at Google, said attending research laboratories and participating in out-of-class activities were the most valuable parts of his Tsinghua experience.

Professors were happy to guide students through their research programs. “You can reach out to professors randomly and most of the time they will be happy to accept you,” Tan said.

Tan completed a summer research program organized by his school at Imperial College London, which he said broadened his research horizons.

At Tsinghua, coding is treated as a core interdisciplinary skill, said Davenzka Abigayle, a second-year undergraduate student in biomedical engineering. Economics students can take up Python for data analysis. Science and engineering students often dig deeper and learn languages ​​like C++ at an early age, he said.

Abigayle completed the C++ course in her first semester.

“It’s beneficial in the long run,” he said, adding that coding helps with his classes and projects.

Students also use artificial intelligence tools on a daily basis supercharged learning.

For Gan, Ph.D. AI has tripled the speed of research by aiding in preliminary checks, code drafting, and early implementations. But the last step remains manual.

“Professors tell you to use the tools, not to resist the tools, but we still have to manually verify our code at the end because research requires complete precision,” he said.

Kuzekov said he used AI tools In his machine learning class with his professor’s approval.

“We need to share our conversations and all these materials with our teacher,” he said.

In some courses, students explain how much of their work involves artificial intelligence. Professors can cross-check usage to verify their work, Abigayle said.

Zak Dychtwald, founder of Young China Group, a Shanghai-based think tank, said Tsinghua’s prestige stems from being “China’s most selective, best-resourced and symbolically most important university, with particularly strong engineering and computer science pipelines that translate directly into elite work and artificial intelligence research.”

“As China becomes increasingly recognized as the source of the world’s leading AI talent, name recognition is more important than ever before,” he added.

One ticket to the top

For many students, the benefits of enrolling at Tsinghua are quickly becoming apparent.

Bryan Constantine Sadihin, a second-year master’s student in computer science, said Tsinghua’s education gave him an advantage in highly competitive technical interviews.

A year after the end of his program, he secured a research internship at ShengShu, one of China’s leading AI startups, where he worked on multi-modal generative AI models. He said Tsinghua’s reputation and education made him “optimistic” about job prospects.

Technology-related roles are the biggest destination. Nearly a third of Tsinghua undergraduate students in 2022 entered IT and software-related industries, according to the university’s data.

Zhao Litao, a senior research fellow at the East Asia Institute of the National University of Singapore, said Tsinghua is at the top of China’s higher education.

“Its prestige reflects not only its academic strength but also its historical role in cultivating political, scientific and technological elites,” said Zhao, who researches China’s social policy.

Zhao said Tsinghua graduates often “move on to leading technology firms, fast-growing startups, or pursue further education.” Preferred tech employers include Huawei, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba.

Zhao said academia remains a key pathway, with many staying in China as geopolitical tensions rise and domestic opportunities expand.

“In particular, a smaller but influential segment is turning to AI-focused startups, often associated with university laboratories,” he added.

At the forefront of China’s passion for artificial intelligence

While China is closing the gap with difficulties in some areas, USA in artificial intelligenceTsinghua students know they are at the center of this.

Tan, a Google software engineer, said that even as an undergraduate in the mid-2010s, it was clear that China was at this stage: at the forefront of technology and is rapidly producing technological talent.

NUS research fellow Zhao said China’s university system is increasingly structured to channel top talent into strategically important sectors, and artificial intelligence is one of the top priorities.

Backed by strong government support and rapid industrial growth, this field is seen as the frontier of both scientific progress and economic opportunity.

“This is not a purely top-down process; student preferences, labor market signals and institutional incentives reinforce each other, especially in the field of artificial intelligence,” he added.

For some Tsinghua students and graduates, being part of China’s top AI training grounds comes with the responsibility of leading the technology revolution.

“There is no one to solve the problem but us. So we have to take action and do the hardest things, and then other people will do the same,” Tan said.

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