Initially, SFT's activities were focused on raising awareness amongst fellow students and young people on campuses and at events such as the 1994 Lollapalooza music tour.

Students for a Free Tibet is perhaps best known for its high-profile actions on Mount Everest, the Great Wall of China, and on the Golden Gate Bridge.

In March and April 2008, the group's participation in organizing protests and disrupting the Olympic torch relay was criticized by many Chinese nationals.

[citation needed] In 2000, SFT and other Tibetan independence groups controversially launched complaints to the World Bank against the implementation of its loan in 1999 for the China Western Poverty Reduction Project.

[10] The groups claimed that the project, to provide irrigation, land improvement, and construction of basic roads to inaccessible mountainous and semi-arid areas in central and western China,[11] would push Chinese migration into Qinghai and "suffocate the Tibetan way of life there".