CSCA Exam: Subjects, Fees, Dates & Who’s Exempt

If you are applying for a bachelor’s degree in China, there is now a test standing between you and your offer that did not exist two years ago.

The CSCA exam, short for China Scholastic Competency Assessment, became a mandatory application document for undergraduate applicants to Chinese Government Scholarship universities from the 2027 academic year. No score report, no complete application. It does not matter how good your high school transcript is or whether you already hold an HSK certificate.

This is the biggest change to Chinese university admissions for international students in more than a decade, and a lot of applicants still have not heard about it. Some are finding out when their target university rejects an incomplete application in February.

This guide covers what the CSCA is, who has to sit it, who genuinely does not, the subjects, the fees, how registration works on csca.cn, and how it fits with the CSC scholarship. Where the official information is still incomplete, I say so rather than guessing.

Quick answers

What the CSCA actually is

The China Scholastic Competency Assessment is a standardised academic test built for international students who want to study at undergraduate level in China. It was developed by the China Scholarship Council with a panel of academics from Chinese universities and educators from the international preparatory system, and it sits under Ministry of Education supervision.

The point of it is comparison. A Chinese admissions officer looking at an application pile might have a Pakistani FSc transcript, a Nigerian WAEC result, an IB diploma, a set of A-Levels and a Vietnamese high school certificate on the same desk, all graded on incompatible scales. There was no reliable way to judge whether those five students had comparable mathematical ability. The CSCA gives every applicant one number on one scale.

China has been shifting from recruiting large numbers of international students to filtering for academic readiness since about 2019. Work on a unified entrance test started around 2021, and the assessment was formally established in the second half of 2025. The first global sitting ran on 21 December 2025, with a smaller paper-based trial in Vietnam and Thailand that October.

Whether you think a new test is a good thing probably depends on where you sit. If you are strong academically and have been losing places to applicants with inflated transcripts, it helps you. If you are a capable student from a country with limited test infrastructure and a weak currency, it is another fee and another obstacle. Both things are true.

Who has to take the CSCA exam

The rollout is phased, and the phase you are in decides whether this is your problem yet.

Note the wording carefully, because this trips people up. The requirement attaches to the university, not the scholarship. Several CGS universities now ask for a CSCA score from self-funded undergraduate applicants too, not just scholarship candidates. Read your target university’s 2027 admission guide rather than assuming you are exempt because you are paying your own fees.

Universities were instructed to state clearly in their admission guides that the CSCA score report is a required document, and to specify which subjects each program needs. If a university’s guide is vague on this, email their admissions office and get it in writing.

Who is exempt

There are fewer exemptions than applicants hope, and the ones people assume exist mostly do not.

Full exemption: graduates of the official preparatory programs at the 17 designated Chinese Government Scholarship preparatory universities skip the assessment entirely. If you completed a recognised foundation year in China, check whether your institution is on that list.

Partial exemption, English-taught programs: if your undergraduate program is taught entirely in English, you do not sit the Professional Chinese paper. You still sit Mathematics, and Physics or Chemistry if your major requires it.

Partial exemption, Chinese Language majors: applicants to Chinese Language and closely related majors (translation, applied Chinese, international Chinese education, Chinese language and culture) may be exempt from the Professional Chinese paper if they hold a valid HSK Level 4 score report. Mathematics is still required.

What does not exempt you: A-Levels, IB, AP, SAT, ACT, or any national school-leaving certificate. Universities will accept those as supporting evidence, but none of them replace a CSCA score. This catches a lot of well-prepared applicants who assume an IB diploma is enough.

Subjects and exam structure

Five components exist. You take the combination your program requires, not all of them.

Everything is multiple choice. Each subject is marked out of 100. Reported durations and question counts vary slightly between sources, so treat the table as a planning guide and confirm the current format on csca.cn before your sitting.

Two details worth pulling out. Mathematics is compulsory for absolutely everyone, including applicants to arts, humanities, business and language programs. And applicants to science, engineering, agriculture and medical majors normally have to take at least one of Physics or Chemistry, with medicine often requiring Chemistry specifically.

Professional Chinese is the only paper with no English option, which is the whole point of it. If your Chinese is not strong, take Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in English and concentrate your preparation on the Chinese paper.

The syllabus is pitched at roughly Grade 12 level. CSC publishes separate syllabus documents for Humanities Chinese, STEM Chinese, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, and those are the documents to prepare from rather than a third-party summary.

Working out which subjects you need

Run through this in order:

1. Is your program taught in Chinese or English? English means no Professional Chinese paper.
2. If it is Chinese-taught, is your major humanities or STEM? That decides which Chinese stream you sit.
3. Is your major in science, engineering, agriculture or medicine? If yes, you need Physics or Chemistry, and possibly a specific one.
4. Check your target university’s admission guide for the exact subject list. Universities set their own requirements within the CSCA framework.
5. Add Mathematics, because everyone takes Mathematics.

Do this before you register, not after. You choose your subjects at registration, and the fee structure rewards deciding correctly the first time.

Scoring and cut-off scores

Each subject is scored out of 100 and reported separately. There is no single aggregate CSCA score and no national pass mark.

Universities receive the results and set their own admission cut-offs, based on their standards and the strength of their applicant pool that year. A score that gets you into a mid-tier provincial university will not get you into Tsinghua. Nobody publishes an official minimum, and any site quoting you a universal passing score is inventing it.

The practical read: aim high rather than aiming at a threshold, because the threshold is whatever your competition scored.

Scores are valid for two years from the date of release. A December 2026 sitting covers you through December 2028, which means you can sit the exam once and use it across two application cycles.

CSCA exam dates

The assessment runs five times a year from 2026 onward, in January, March, April, June and December.

Sittings begin simultaneously worldwide, which is why the calendar is spread the way it is. December, April and June sessions fall at times more convenient for candidates in the Asia-Pacific region. January and March suit Europe, Africa and the Americas better. Check the Beijing start time against your own timezone before you commit to a session, because a session that starts at a civilised hour in Bangkok may start at 3am where you are.

The 2026 sittings ran on 25 January, 15 March, 25 April and 27 June. A December 2026 session is expected, and as of writing CSC has not confirmed the exact date. Registration for each sitting typically opens several weeks to a couple of months beforehand and closes well before the exam. Late registration is not accepted.

Confirm every date on csca.cn. Third-party calendars in this niche go stale fast, and missing a registration window costs you an entire application cycle.

How to register on csca.cn

All registration runs through the official portal at csca.cn. There is no agent route, no alternative site, and no offline paper application. If someone offers to register you for a fee, they are either reselling something free or running a scam.

The process:

1. Create an account using your name exactly as it appears on your passport. A mismatch between your account name and your passport causes problems later when universities match your score report to your application.
2. Verify your email address and complete your personal profile.
3. Select your program language, Chinese-taught or English-taught, and your intended major direction. The system unlocks the relevant subject options based on this choice, so getting it wrong here limits what you can register for.
4. Choose your subjects.
5. Choose your test session and test mode.
6. Pay the fee.
7. Download your admission ticket once it is issued, and keep it with your passport.

Register early in the window. Test slots and centre capacity are finite, and the sessions closest to major application deadlines fill first.

Fees and payment

The fee is ¥450 CNY for a single subject, or ¥700 CNY total if you take two or more subjects in the same sitting. That structure means taking three subjects in one session costs the same as taking two, and considerably less than splitting them across sittings.

Accepted payment methods are Alipay, WeChat Pay, UnionPay, Visa and Mastercard. International cards work, which matters for applicants in countries with no Chinese payment infrastructure.

Budget for the possibility of resitting. If your score comes back below what your target university needs, another sitting is another fee.

Online or offline: the rule people miss

The CSCA is primarily an online exam taken at home with remote proctoring. That is how most candidates worldwide sit it.

Offline test centres exist in selected countries, running either computer-based or paper-based exams. The first ones opened in Vietnam and Thailand.

Here is the part that catches people out: if there is an offline test centre in your area, you are not eligible to register for the remote-proctored home-based test. You have to attend the centre. Check whether a centre covers your location before you plan around taking the exam at your desk.

For the home-based option, test your setup properly in advance. Stable internet, a working webcam, a quiet room and a valid passport for identity verification. Remote proctoring is unforgiving about connection drops and about anyone else appearing on camera.

When results arrive

Online and computer-based results are released within about 7 working days. Paper-based results take around 14 working days. Scores appear on csca.cn.

Work backwards from your application deadlines. If a university’s deadline is 28 February and the nearest sitting is 15 March, that sitting is useless to you. This is the single most common planning error with the CSCA, and it is entirely avoidable.

CSCA vs HSK: not the same thing

Applicants conflate these constantly. They test different things and neither replaces the other.

You will most likely need both. Your university’s language requirement is separate from the CSCA requirement, so an HSK 4 or HSK 5 certificate does not remove the need for a CSCA score, and a strong CSCA result does not satisfy a language requirement.

The one overlap is the exemption noted earlier: Chinese Language majors with a valid HSK Level 4 report may skip the Professional Chinese paper. That is a subject-level exemption, not an exemption from the exam.

Is the CSCA China’s gaokao for foreigners?

Sort of, and the comparison is useful as long as you do not take it literally.

The gaokao is a high-stakes, multi-day national examination that decides university placement for Chinese students, with fierce competition and enormous social weight. The CSCA is a shorter multiple-choice assessment used as one input among several, alongside your transcript, language certificate, personal statement and, for scholarship applicants, the whole CSC application.

What the two share is the direction of travel. China is moving international undergraduate admissions toward the same kind of standardised, comparable benchmark it applies domestically. The CSCA is the first serious step in that direction.

Do you need the CSCA for a master’s or PhD?

No. The assessment is for undergraduate admission only.

Master’s and doctoral applicants, whether self-funded or applying through the Chinese Government Scholarship, are not affected. Your application still runs on your degree certificate, transcripts, language certificate, research proposal, recommendation letters and, in most cases, a supervisor’s acceptance.

If a site tells you postgraduate applicants need a CSCA score, it is wrong.

How the CSCA fits with the CSC scholarship

For undergraduate CSC applicants, the CSCA score report is now one of the required documents. It sits alongside everything you were already submitting: notarised high school diploma and transcripts, passport, language certificate, study plan, physical examination form, non-criminal record and financial documents.

The order matters. You need to sit the exam and receive your score before you submit your scholarship application, because the score report goes into the application package. That pushes your real deadline months earlier than the published application deadline.

For a typical 2027/2028 cycle, working backwards: embassy deadlines commonly fall between January and April, university deadlines from December through April, so you want a score in hand by December 2026 or January 2027 at the latest. Which means registering in October or November 2026 for the December sitting, or January 2027 for the January sitting if your deadline is late.

The scholarship itself is unchanged. Coverage, agency numbers, Type A and Type B routes, annual review, all the same. The CSCA is an additional gate on the undergraduate track, not a redesign of the scholarship.

Preparing for it

The syllabus documents published by CSC are the primary source. Prepare from those rather than from a summary, and download the correct stream (Humanities or STEM) for the Chinese paper.

Practical suggestions:

• Sit a full-length mock under timed conditions before your real session. Multiple choice under time pressure is a skill separate from knowing the material.
• If your Chinese is borderline, take the science papers in English and put your preparation hours into the Chinese paper, since it has no English option.
• Grade 12 maths is the benchmark. If you finished school several years ago, this is the section to revise hardest, and it is the one every applicant sits.
• Free mock tests and practice banks exist. Some are decent. Verify anything they claim about dates or requirements against csca.cn, because several are commercial services with an interest in urgency.

Common mistakes

• Assuming you are exempt because you are self-funded. Many CGS universities require the score regardless.
• Assuming an IB diploma, A-Levels or SAT scores substitute. They do not.
• Registering for the wrong Chinese stream.
• Forgetting Mathematics is compulsory for humanities applicants.
• Booking a sitting whose results land after your application deadline.
• Registering with a name that does not match the passport.
• Planning for the home-based test when an offline centre covers your area.
• Relying on a third-party site for exam dates.

Official links

• CSCA registration and information portal: csca.cn
• China Scholarship Council: csc.edu.cn
• CSC study in China application portal: studyinchina.csc.edu.cn
• Chinese Government Scholarship information: campuschina.org
• Your local Chinese embassy education section, for Type A deadlines and your country’s agency number

Anything about your specific program comes from your target university’s official admission guide. Universities set their own subject requirements and cut-offs within the CSCA framework, so their guide is the final word.

Frequently asked questions

Is the CSCA exam mandatory? Yes, for international applicants to undergraduate programs at Chinese Government Scholarship universities from the 2027 academic year. It is expected to extend to all international undergraduate applicants to Chinese universities from around 2028.

What subjects are on the CSCA exam? Professional Chinese (Humanities or STEM stream), Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. Mathematics is compulsory for everyone. Science, engineering, agriculture and medical applicants normally take Physics or Chemistry as well.

How much does the CSCA exam cost? ¥450 CNY for one subject, or ¥700 CNY for two or more subjects in the same sitting. Payment by Alipay, WeChat Pay, UnionPay, Visa or Mastercard.

Where do I register for the CSCA? Only at csca.cn. It is the official portal for accounts, subject selection, session booking, payment and results.

How many times a year is the CSCA held? Five, in January, March, April, June and December.

How long are CSCA scores valid? Two years from the date the score is released.

Is there a passing score for the CSCA? There is no national pass mark. Each subject is scored out of 100 and each university sets its own cut-off.

Can I take the CSCA at home? Usually yes, with remote proctoring. But if an offline test centre operates in your area, you must attend it and cannot register for the home-based test.

Does HSK 4 exempt me from the CSCA? Only partially, and only for Chinese Language and closely related majors, where a valid HSK Level 4 report can exempt you from the Professional Chinese paper. Mathematics is still required.

Do master’s and PhD applicants need the CSCA? No. It applies to undergraduate admission only.

Do A-Levels, IB or SAT scores exempt me? No. Universities accept them as supporting documents, not as substitutes for a CSCA score report.

When will CSCA results be released? About 7 working days after online and computer-based sittings, and about 14 working days after paper-based sittings.