Northwest A&F University

Northwest A&F University was founded in 1934 and took its present shape in 1999 from seven institutions. It is a Project 985 university specialising in agriculture, forestry, water conservancy and life sciences, at Yangling in Shaanxi. Its setting is the point for a Kazakh applicant. Yangling sits on the semi-arid Loess Plateau, and the university's research concentrates on dryland farming, water-efficient irrigation, soil conservation and arid-zone agriculture. Those are the conditions across much of Kazakhstan's grain belt. A student researching dryland wheat, irrigation efficiency or soil degradation here is working on problems that exist at home, in a way that agricultural teaching in the wet Chinese south or in Western Europe does not offer. Yangling is a small agricultural science town rather than a city, which means low costs alongside limited amenities and no international air connections of its own.