Graduate students can be divided into master students and doctoral students, and the general academic system is 2 or 3 years. According to different degrees, it can be divided into academic graduate students and professional graduate students, in which academic graduate students generally study for 3 years and professional graduate students generally study for 2 years. Doctoral students are full-time for 3 or 4 years, and part-time students are usually less than 6 years.

The unified recruitment of graduate students in general higher education includes full-time graduate students and part-time graduate students, and students are enrolled through the national unified entrance examination for master's and doctoral students or the recommended exemption examination. Before 20 17, on-the-job graduate students refer to on-the-job graduate students, who mainly passed the 10 entrance examination and enrolled students with equivalent academic qualifications. Traditional on-the-job graduate students have no postgraduate education but only a degree certificate.

From 20 17, the traditional on-the-job postgraduate students will be abolished and part-time postgraduate students will be established on the basis of full-time postgraduate education. At the end of 12, part-time graduate students and full-time graduate students took the national unified postgraduate entrance examination, determined the same admission scores, implemented the same training graduation standards, and obtained the same general higher education diploma and degree certificate when they graduated. They just have different learning forms, and their academic qualifications are all general higher education.

Application method: Postgraduates are divided according to the examination methods, mainly including the national unified examination (including the joint examination mode of master of law, management specialty and nursing specialty), separate examination and exemption examination.