West China School of Medicine is one of the earliest schools granting doctoral degree inWest China. It began to recruit master students in 1978, and started to recruit doctoral students in 1982. Now the School is authorized to confer master and doctoral degrees in 3 primary disciplines (Clinical Medicine, Integrated TCM and Western Medicine, and Nursing), with 33 doctoral degree programs and 34 master's degree programs. It has 286 supervisors of Ph.D. students, and 351 supervisors in the Master’s program.

The Department of Graduate Education was founded in 1984 and is one of the main departments in the school and hospital. It is responsible for the recruitment, training, degree-conferring, employment, construction of supervisor team, and administration of routine work of clinical medical graduate students.

Each year, West China School of Medicine welcomes approximately 500 master’s students and 220 doctoral students, who come from all over China, including Taiwan and Macao. In recent years, the school has also been recruiting foreign graduate students.Current enrollement of students includes 725 doctoral candidates, 1415 master’s candidates, and 73 graduate students from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwanese and abroad.

The Medical Graduate Education program provides research degree and professional degree programs, which will award master’s degrees (Master of Medical Sciences or Master of Clinical Medicine) and doctoral degrees (Doctor of Philosophy or Doctor of Clinical Medicine) correspondingly.

The Graduate Education programs cover 30 disciplines，including Internal Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Pediatrics, Ophthalmology, ENT, Neurology, Psychology, Dermatology, Oncology, Anaesthesiology, Radiology, Laboratory Medicine, Nursing,Geriatrics, Rehabilitation Medicine, Sports Medicine, Evidence-based Medicine, Transplantation Medicine, GLP/GCP, Clinical Genetics, Integrated TCM and Western Medicine, Pathology, Pathophysiology, Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pharmacology, Emergency Medicine, Allied Health Professions, Medical Informatics, HospitalManagement and Health Policy, General Medical, Maternal and Infant Medical, and others.

To graduate with a degree, every student is required to complete certain courses, finish corresponding scientific research project or clinical training, pass the thesis defense, and have a paper published. The school requires all doctoral students to publish at least one paper in an SCI journal before they can graduate.

West China School of Medicine has a very strong Graduate Student Support System, which provides financial support from the university, the medical school, the tutors, and external groups. With this support, graduate students can devote themselves completely to their research and clinical training.

West China School of Medicine attaches great importance to international exchange and cooperation of the graduate students, and has established several funds to assist them to study abroad or attend international academic conferences. These funds, which can be used to pay for the international airfare and living expenses, mainly come from the foundation of China Scholarship Council , the Doctoral Academic Exchange Foundation of Sichuan University and the Students Academic Exchange Grants of West China School of Medicine. In 2017, a total of 257 graduate students studed abroad or attended conferences, which ranked the first among all schools of Sichuan university.