The university has 21 schools and 59 departments, with faculties in science, engineering, humanities, law, medicine, history, philosophy, economics, management, education, and art.

[9][10] Using this fund, the Tsinghua College (清華學堂; Qīnghuá Xuétáng) was established in Beijing, on 29 April 1911 on the site of a former royal garden to serve as a preparatory school for students the government planned to send to the United States.

[citation needed] The motto of Tsinghua, "Self-Discipline and Social Commitment", was derived from a 1914 speech by prominent scholar and faculty member Liang Qichao, in which he quoted the I Ching to describe a notion of the ideal gentleman.

Tsinghua University's then president Mei Yiqi, along with many professors, fled to Taiwan with the retreating Nationalist government.

[35] In the 1980s, Tsinghua evolved beyond the polytechnic model and incorporated a multidisciplinary system emphasizing collaboration between distinct schools within the broader university environment.

[38] Tsinghua alumni include the current General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and paramount leader of China, Xi Jinping '79, who graduated with a degree in chemical engineering, along with the CCP General Secretary and former Paramount Leader of China Hu Jintao '64, who graduated with a degree in hydraulic engineering.

[65] Tsinghua is an associate member of the Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research (CLUSTER).

While selectivity varies by province, the sheer number of high school students applying for college each year has resulted in overall acceptance rates far lower than 0.1% of all test takers.

[70] Research at Tsinghua University is mainly supported by government funding from national programs and special projects.

In the areas of science and technology, funding from these sources totals over 20 billion yuan, which subsidizes more than 1,400 projects every year conducted by the university.

[72] Each year, the university hosts the Intellectual Property Summer Institute in cooperation with Franklin Pierce Law Center of Concord, New Hampshire.

1 in China, the whole of Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries according to the Times Higher Education,[91][92][93] with its industry income, research, and teaching performance indicator placed at 1st, 4th and 9th respectively in the world.

[156] The mission of the Department of Precision Instrument at Tsinghua University, as its dean said, is "supporting the national development and improving the people’s well-being.

It obtained the Chinese government's authorization to offer PhD program in 1981 and the approval to build the post-doctoral research site in 1988.

[156][169] There are six teaching laboratories or centers which serve significant roles in undergraduate and graduate education in the Department of Precision Instrument.

The school currently has 129 professors and employees, around 600 undergraduates (including the candidates of Tsinghua University – Peking Union Medical College joint MD program).

Its predecessor was Communication Studies in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature and its establishment of coincides with the development of media increasingly influencing world affairs in a time of fast-growing globalization.

The objective of the school is to bring full advantage of Tsinghua University's comprehensive academic structure to Chinese and international media, to construct a first-rate discipline in journalism and communication studies, to cultivate talented professionals in the field and to explore advanced concepts in journalism and communication.

Graduating from institutions such as Columbia, Yale, and Harvard, those Tsinghua alumni have played an important role in areas of law and diplomacy.

Famous legal scholars Tuan-Sheng Ch'ien,[183] Yan Shutang (燕树棠), Wang Huacheng (王化成), Kung Chuan Hsiao (萧公权),[184] Pu Xuefeng (浦薛凤), Mei Ju'ao (梅汝璈),[185] Xiang Zhejun (向哲浚) and diplomat Tang Yueliang (唐悦良)[186] are all graduates from Tsinghua College or went to study abroad after passing exams in Tsinghua College.

Many Chinese legal scholars graduated during that era, including Wang Tieya (王铁崖), Gong Xiangrui (龚祥瑞) and Lou Bangyan (楼邦彦).

[204] Other notable 20th-century Chinese architects such as Li Daozeng, Zhou Weiquan, Wang Guoyu and Guan Zhaoye have all designed various buildings on the Tsinghua University campus.

[206] A collection of old documents, pictures, artworks, maps, graphics, videos and music tells the visitors the history of Tsinghua University.

[207] Forbes has referred to Tsinghua as China's "power factory", citing the amount of senior Chinese politicians the university has produced.

[208]Notable alumni who have held senior positions in Chinese politics include current general secretary and president of China, Xi Jinping,[209] former general secretary and president of China Hu Jintao,[210] former chairman of the National People's Congress Wu Bangguo,[211] former premier Zhu Rongji,[212] and the former first vice premier Huang Ju.

[213] This also includes politicians like Wu Guanzheng,[214] former governor of the People's Bank of China Zhou Xiaochuan,[215] former minister of finance Lou Jiwei,[216] general Sun Li-jen, Liang Qichao,[217] and more.

[218] Notable alumni in the sciences include Nobel laureate Yang Chen Ning,[219] who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with Tsung-Dao Lee on parity nonconservation of weak interaction; Wolf Prize winning mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern,[220] biologist Min Chueh Chang,[221] theoretical physicist Zhou Peiyuan, astronomer Zhang Yuzhe, biomedical engineer Leslie Ying,[222] mechanical engineer Qingyan Chen,[223] anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, sociologist and ethnologist Wu Wenzao, political scientist K. C. Hsiao,[224] and sociologist Pan Guangdan.

[225] These include billionaires Sun Hongbin (real estate),[226] chairman of Goertek Jiang Bin (components),[227] Xu Hang (medical devices),[228] and Zhang Zetian (e-commerce),[229] among others.

Notable alumni in the arts and poetry include author Qian Zhongshu,[230] Wen Yiduo, painter Xinyi Cheng, historian and poet Wang Guowei, Chen Yinke, and architect Xu Tiantian.

They are members of the fourth generation of Chinese leadership, and are purported to hold reformist and hesitantly pro-democratic ideas (a number have studied in the United States following graduation from Tsinghua, and some are said to be influenced by the reform ideals of Hu Yaobang).