New York University officials announced Monday that they will soon begin admission to recruit its first batch of undergraduate students for its Shanghai campus.

NYU-Shanghai, the first Sino-U.S. joint venture university will recruit around 300 students and around 151 of them will be from mainland China.

The officials were speaking at a ceremony marking the campus' official opening, reports Global Times.

"In many ways it is as if we - together - are giving birth to a new child," said John Sexton, president of New York University.

"It has been a long labor - not without pain - and we know we have a tender child we need to raise together over the coming years," he said.

The graduates of the university will get a double bachelor's degree from both the New York-based main campus and the overseas Shanghai branch.

Though half of the students applying will be Chinese, the rest will be from all over the world. They all will have to pass an entrance exam to get into the university.

However, there appears to be a stark difference in the fee structure between the branches. While NYU main campus at Greenwich charges around $50,000 per year for home students, the Shanghai campus charges around $15,955 per year to the Chinese, three times lesser than their New York City counterparts. Yet, NYU-Shanghai is the most expensive school in all of China. Even scholarships will be awarded to 'extremely bright' students, reports English.Eastday.com.

The reduced fee is reflective of the fact that NYU-Shanghai is a government-backed university, while the main campus of NYU is entirely private and independent university.

Students from outside China will have to pay according to NYU's usual fee structure.

"The establishment of the university is significant to the opening of Shanghai's higher education to the outside world," said Shen Xiaoming, Vice Mayor of Shanghai.

The language of instruction will be in English, but students will have to mandatorily learn Mandarin.

Apart from Shanghai and New York City, NYU has one other portal campus in Abu Dhabi.