Survives SJTU Manual is a community-maintained guidebook that provides practical advice for students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
The project addresses the need to update and expand a survival manual originally written in 2008 by SJTU undergraduates. The original handbook covered topics relevant to students pursuing overseas doctoral studies, but lacked guidance on domestic graduate programs and employment within China. The approach involves converting the manual into a GitBook format for easier maintenance and distribution, then systematically adding new chapters and updating existing content to reflect current policies and opportunities. The project solicits contributions from current students, alumni, and even students from other institutions to share experiences across multiple career paths.
The manual suits SJTU students and prospective students seeking guidance on navigating university life, career planning, and post-graduation options. It is particularly valuable for those considering domestic graduate study, employment in China, research opportunities, and major selection. The project explicitly separates application-specific content into a companion repository to keep the main manual focused on general survival and planning advice. Contributors can submit changes through GitBook's interface by forking the repository, making edits, and submitting pull requests for review before merging.
The project maintains an active issue-tracking system where readers can flag concerns about accuracy or bias in contributed content, with the team committing to seek secondary review from students with similar backgrounds before making corrections. The maintainers welcome pull requests from both SJTU alumni and current students, as well as external contributors sharing experiences relevant to the broader student community. The project roadmap includes planned additions for overseas transfer experiences, professional introductions across SJTU departments, civil service selection guidance, and graduate program experiences, with some sections marked as incomplete pending sufficient community contributions.
