Kazan Federal University is one of the oldest Russian universities, associated with the names of Vladimir Lenin, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, seven Nobel Prize laureates and modern statesmen. University is located in a place where representatives of Islam and Christianity have coexisted for more than 400 years. Nowadays, Kazan Federal University is a dynamic modern university actively engaged in local and international cooperation and networking with academia and industry. At Kazan Federal University there are 23,822 students engaged in major academic programs; this includes around 5,000 international students from 90 countries enrolled in 590 degree and non-degree programs in various disciplines. To seek for more information about our University, go to KFU official site at http://kpfu.ru/eng/ (in English) or http://kpfu.ru (in Russian, and it includes some information in another world major languages).

KFU Preparatory school is the University unit that trains international students with little or no knowledge of the Russian language before they begin Russian-taught degree programs. Within 10 months of pre-university instruction, students gain the Russian language proficiency that meets the demands of CEFR level B1 or TORFL level 1, study in a chosen academic field (“professional profiles”), and adapt to the new educational environment and routine life. Upon completing Preparatory School, students are expected to be ready to enter the Russian-taught full-degree programs at KFU and other Russian institutions of higher education.

A variety of programs for training foreign citizens in the Russian language have been running at Kazan University since 1979. In 2004, at the department of modern Russian language the special program of pre-university training for foreign citizens has been developed. The idea of ​​ this program belonged to the head of the department, the well-known linguist professor Emilia Agafonovna Balalykina. The program and the newly founded preparatory section for international students were supervised by the assistant professor of the department, Rais Niyazovich Safin. He also headed the preparatory school established in 2010 – an expanded program of pre-university training that met federal requirements. In 2017-2019, the School was headed by Elena Dominikovna Shimkovich, candidate of biology. Currently, candidate of Sociology Alishev Timerhan Bulatovich is an acting dean of the school.

The goal of the School is to  instruct international students in the Russian language and in major subjects for their successful continuation of studies at the departments and institutes of KFU and other Russian universities. For all this time, more than 1000 foreign citizens got trained for admission to our and other Russian Federation Universities. In the 2013-2014 academic year, more than 150 foreign citizens studied at the prep-school; in the 2014-2015 academic year – more than 260; in 2015-2016, more than 300 from 40 countries. In the 2016-2017 academic year, more than 400 students are on the lists of the preparatory school. In the 2017-2018 academic year, the school enrolled more than 500 students, 100 of them held a Russian state-sponsored scholarship. In the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years, the number of students remained approximately on the same level.