Southern Medical University formerly known as First Military Medical University of the People’s Liberation Army, was founded in 1951. It was honored as a national key university in 1979, and was renamed Southern Medical University in 2004. Now the university, as one of the first universities in China that have been sponsored jointly by the Ministry of Education, the National Health Commission and Guangdong Province, is a key university in “the Construction Project of High-level Universities” in Guangdong Province.

With 23 schools offering 36 undergraduate programs, including 7 national featured majors, and 20 national construction sites of first-class undergraduate majors, the university recruits students from 32 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities as well as the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao. At present, it is home to 14,172 full-time undergraduate students, 7,678 graduate students, and 1,017 international students.

The university boasts 10 first-level doctorate disciplines, 8 post-doctoral research stations and 5 national key disciplines, with 9 disciplines having entered the top 1% of ESI world ranking, and Clinical Medicine having entered the top 1‰ of the world ranking.

The university is one of the pilot universities in China to offer an eight-year medical program, one of the pilot colleges and universities to offer “the excellent medical education programs”, and one of “the national training bases of top-level students of Basic Medicine”. The university has won 10 national teaching achievement awards. In the National Medical Practitioner Qualification Examination, the pass rate of the Clinical Medicine students has ranked 4th in China at the best time, and the pass rate of the Traditional Chinese Medicine students has ranked the top for three times.