CSCA 2027: who needs the exam, which subjects to take, and how Chinese universities differ

The CSCA (China Scholastic Competency Assessment) is a standardised test for international applicants to undergraduate degrees in mainland China. It is organised by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), and registration runs only through csca.cn. There are five subjects: Professional Chinese for humanities, Professional Chinese for STEM, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, each marked out of 100. The exam is not yet a universal requirement, and that is the central point. On the scholarship route it is compulsory: an application for a Chinese Government Scholarship at undergraduate level is not accepted without a valid score report. Away from that route the university decides, and in the 2026 cycle the decisions diverged. Zhejiang University required the CSCA of every undergraduate applicant, Fudan University made the exam the first step of its procedure, Shanghai Jiao Tong University allowed the score to be supplied after pre-admission, Peking University tied the requirement to its scholarship, and Tsinghua University answered in its published FAQ that it does not require CSCA scores for the 2026 intake. No pass mark exists, either for the exam or at any of the universities checked: an admissions office sees the score together with the candidate's percentile among all test-takers worldwide and applies its own criteria. From 2028, under the official notice, the exam becomes compulsory for all undergraduate applicants, and minimum standards will be set at that point.

• The CSCA is organised by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) together with academics from Chinese universities. Registration runs only through csca.cn.
• Five subjects. Professional Chinese, in separate humanities and STEM versions, runs 90 minutes over 80 questions and is offered in Chinese only. Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry each run 60 minutes over 48 questions and are offered in Chinese or English. Everything is marked out of 100, with one correct answer per question.
• A minimum set of subjects is defined centrally: Mathematics and Professional Chinese. Physics and Chemistry are listed as optional, and whether they are needed is for the university to say.
• Whether the exam is required at all varies. The scholarship route demands it outright; away from that route the university decides, and in the 2026 cycle five leading institutions resolved the question five different ways.
• There is no pass mark. Neither the CSC nor any of the universities checked publishes a minimum score, and alongside the mark an admissions office sees the candidate's percentile among all test-takers worldwide.
• A score is valid for two years, the number of attempts is unlimited, and the best valid score may be submitted, subject to the receiving institution's own rules.
• Five sittings a year: January, March, April, June and December. The fee is CNY 450 for one subject and CNY 700 for two or more.
• The language of the paper is not a matter of preference. Zhejiang University requires the Chinese version for Chinese-taught programmes and the English version for English-taught ones; Fudan University expressly forbids applicants to Chinese-taught programmes from sitting the English version.
• An English-taught programme does not exempt you. At Zhejiang University the MBBS requires Mathematics and Chemistry in English, while the communication programme requires Mathematics alone.

What the CSCA is

The CSCA is the China Scholastic Competency Assessment, in Chinese 来华留学本科入学学业水平测试. It is a standardised test for international students intending to read for a bachelor's degree in mainland China. It is organised by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), developed jointly with academics from Chinese universities, and registration runs only through csca.cn.

The CSC describes the purpose of the exam more cautiously than it may first appear: the CSCA assesses language proficiency and academic readiness and serves as an important reference that Chinese universities use when reviewing applications and scholarship awards. The word reference is not a softening. It means the exam neither decides anything nor sets a threshold: it gives an admissions office a comparable figure, and what to do with that figure is the office's own decision.

What the CSCA is not

The exam is easily confused with four other things, and each confusion produces its own planning error.

It matters especially not to conflate the CSCA with the HSK. Professional Chinese within the CSCA is not a test of general language level but a test of the ability to study in Chinese within a particular field: the humanities version works with material from literature, philosophy, law, history and the arts, while the STEM version works with mathematical and physical notation, laboratory terminology and the text of university course books. Passing HSK 5 and struggling with Professional Chinese is a real outcome, and so is the reverse.

Neither exam substitutes for the other. In the 2026 cycle Zhejiang University required both an HSK level set programme by programme and the CSCA, as two independent conditions of eligibility.

Who needs the CSCA: the answer depends on the route

The claim that the CSCA is compulsory for every international applicant is common and, as matters stand, wrong. The correct answer has three parts, and they do not coincide.

The scholarship route: compulsory

Here the wording leaves no room. Embassy notices on the Chinese Government Scholarship for the 2026/2027 academic year state that all applicants to undergraduate degree programmes must take the CSCA before submitting their scholarship application and must include a valid score report with it. Without one the application is incomplete.

Outside the scholarship: the university decides

Away from the scholarship route the same exam becomes a requirement of the individual institution. This is where the divergence arises that the next section is written for: one university requires the CSCA of everyone, another does not require it at all, a third allows the score to arrive later.

From 2028: compulsory for everyone

The official notice puts this plainly: beginning in 2028, all undergraduate applicants to Chinese universities will be required to take the exam, and minimum admission standards will be established for it. The present divergence is therefore a transitional state rather than the design of the system.

How the universities differ

What follows is what five leading universities published on their own admissions pages. One caveat matters: at the date of this check none of them had yet published the rules for the 2027 cycle, and the table sets out the documents of the 2026 cycle. They show not the dates to come but each university's approach to the exam, and it is the approach that is worth understanding in advance.

Tsinghua University's answer is worth quoting, because it runs against the common impression of the exam. Asked whether CSCA scores are mandatory when applying to Tsinghua, the published FAQ replies that they are not: the university does not require CSCA scores for the 2026 intake, and all the academic records and examinations listed in the academic performance section are accepted.

Zhejiang University sits at the opposite pole. Its 2026 admission guide states the requirement in general terms: from the 2026/2027 academic year, all international students applying for undergraduate programmes are required to provide a valid CSCA report. The language of the paper is fixed too, tied to the language of the programme rather than to the candidate's preference.

Two universities of comparable standing, one admissions cycle, one exam, and directly opposite requirements. This is not transitional confusion but the normal condition of Chinese admissions: no nationwide obligation exists yet, and each institution settles the question for itself.

The subjects: what is actually sat

There are five subjects in two groups. Professional Chinese exists in two versions, for humanities and for STEM fields, and is offered in Chinese only. Mathematics, physics and chemistry are the foundational subjects and are offered in two languages.

Every question is multiple choice with a single correct answer. The arithmetic of the time deserves attention in preparation: 48 questions in 60 minutes leaves an average of 75 seconds each, which is closer to a test of speed and accuracy than to extended written work.

The official rule for choosing subjects

The CSC gives direct guidance that settles part of the question before you approach a university. Two subjects are named as required: mathematics and Professional Chinese, with the version of Professional Chinese chosen according to the requirements of the intended university and major. Physics and chemistry are listed as optional, and candidates are told to confirm with the university whether they are needed.

For those applying outside the scholarship route the rule carries one amendment: Professional Chinese is mandatory for applicants to Chinese-taught programmes. Mathematics remains required either way.

What the syllabus covers

The CSC publishes a syllabus for every subject as a separate document. Below are the content blocks from the official 2025 editions; they give a sense of the level to be reached.

The level is stated outright: the syllabuses describe what is needed for the first year of a Chinese university. For STEM Professional Chinese the requirement is more specific still, that the candidate should read university course books in mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing independently and work through research papers with a dictionary.

Choosing subjects for your field

General patterns exist, but they cannot be relied on at the point of registration: the set is defined by the programme, and it changes from department to department within a single university. Below are examples from Fudan University's official list for Chinese-taught programmes in the 2026 cycle. They show the logic rather than a rule that holds everywhere.

Psychology is worth pausing on. The name reads as a humanities field, yet Fudan University places it among the sciences and requires the corresponding version of Professional Chinese. The mistake is easy to make and expensive to correct: subjects cannot be changed after registration, and a refund covers the whole order only, and then only before the admission ticket is issued.

The logic is the same for English-taught programmes, though the sets are shorter. At Zhejiang University clinical medicine (MBBS) and biomedical engineering take mathematics and chemistry, while the programme in global communication and management takes mathematics alone, in every case in English. At Fudan University the English-taught programmes in international organisations, economics and fintech require mathematics only, the data science programme requires mathematics and physics, and the MBBS requires mathematics, physics and chemistry.

Registering, and how the exam runs

Registration runs through csca.cn alone. The procedure is set out officially: prepare a photograph meeting the site's requirements, a valid passport and a bank card; review the date, format and location; then create an account and register. Registration counts as complete once the confirmation email arrives.

There are three formats: a home-based online exam with remote proctoring, a computer-based test at an authorised centre, and a paper test. The content, the duration and the question types are identical across all three. The home-based online format remains the main one for now, as the network of on-site centres is built out gradually.

The timetable within the day is set centrally and is the same worldwide: Professional Chinese from 12:00 to 13:30, physics from 15:00 to 16:00, mathematics from 18:00 to 19:00 and chemistry from 20:30 to 21:30, Beijing time. Candidates sitting several subjects should work out the local times before registering.

The rules are strict in both formats. Paper scratch sheets are prohibited in the home-based format: what is allowed is a small whiteboard with an erasable marker, or a blank sheet inside a transparent file written on with an erasable marker. At an on-site centre candidates must arrive at least 40 minutes before the start; no admission is permitted once the exam has begun, and late arrival is recorded as absence with no refund. Submitting the paper early is not permitted in any format.

Results: timing, validity and the absence of a pass mark

Results for the online and computer-based formats are released within seven working days, and for the paper test within fourteen. The report is downloaded from the candidate's account on csca.cn and counts as an official document: there is no separate score-sending service to arrange, and candidates submit the electronic report with their application themselves.

A score is valid for two years from the date of issue. The number of attempts is unlimited, and the best valid score may be submitted, subject to the receiving institution's own policies. That qualification is not a formality: in the 2026 cycle Fudan University accepted only the December score for its first application window, restricting not the validity of the result but the particular sitting.

There is no pass mark

This is a case where the absence of an answer is itself the answer. Neither the CSC nor any of the five universities checked publishes a minimum CSCA score. The CSC's own wording is unambiguous: results serve as a reference for universities, which set their own admission criteria according to the requirements of individual programmes.

The mechanism to understand in place of a threshold that does not exist is the percentile. Alongside the mark, an admissions office sees where the candidate stands among everyone who sat that subject worldwide in that sitting. The official definition is precise: the percentile shows the proportion of test-takers whose result was at or below this candidate's.

What the official sources do not contain, and what is therefore absent here: score distributions, averages by sitting, ranges of competitive results, and admission statistics by mark. Such figures circulate on third-party sites, but no primary source supports them, and planning cannot rest on them.

The CSCA and scholarships

The connection is direct but runs one way. For the Chinese Government Scholarship at undergraduate level a valid CSCA report belongs to the compulsory set of documents: embassy notices state that the exam must be taken before the application is submitted and the result attached to it. Without one the application is incomplete.

The reverse does not hold. A high CSCA score does not produce a scholarship and does not raise the probability of one automatically: the awarding committee assesses the application as a whole, and the amount of funding and the number of places are set by bilateral agreements and differ from country to country. The scholarship also requires a pre-admission document from the university and that the institution be named as first preference, so the arrangement with the university must precede the scholarship application.

One point of terminology trips up planning on its own. The 2026/2027 academic year in Chinese documents means entry in September 2026, not 2027. Applicants entering in September 2026 were directed to sit the CSCA on 21 December 2025 or 25 January 2026. The corresponding sittings and deadlines for entry in September 2027 are announced separately, and at the date of this check they had not been published.

Fitting the CSCA into the admissions calendar

The CSCA dates and the university deadlines are two independent calendars, and reconciling them falls to the candidate. The exam is held five times a year: in January, March, April, June and December, with the particular dates published at the start of each year. Application deadlines are set by each university, and no national deadline exists.

The right order of planning is the opposite of the intuitive one. The starting point is not the exam date but the application deadline of the chosen programme, counted backwards.

The exam date is not the last day of preparation. It is the registration deadline plus the time it takes for the result to be released, and those two dates usually lie about two months apart.

Preparation

Preparing for the CSCA differs from preparing for a language exam in that it begins not with lessons but with two decisions that cannot be taken later.

• The first decision is the set of subjects. It comes from the document of the chosen programme, not from a general sense of the field. Psychology at Fudan University sits among the sciences, and information management at Zhejiang requires physics: neither is predictable from the name of the field.
• The second decision is the language for mathematics, physics and chemistry. It is determined by the language of the programme rather than by the candidate's comfort, and it is chosen once: neither subject nor language can be changed after registration.
• Diagnosis against the official syllabus. The CSC publishes a syllabus for all five subjects, and the first substantive step is to compare your school preparation against it and mark the sections your school course never covered.
• Terminology separately from content. For candidates sitting in Chinese the CSC publishes glossaries for mathematics, physics and chemistry, together with vocabulary lists for both versions of Professional Chinese. Knowing a subject and knowing its notation in the language of the exam are different things, and the second is built separately.
• The format as a skill in its own right. Single-answer questions at 75 seconds each reward speed and accuracy rather than extended reasoning. That is trained on practice papers, and better before the sitting than during it.
• Fitting it into the wider calendar. CSCA preparation runs alongside the HSK or IELTS, the documents and the scholarship application. Planned in isolation it goes badly: the deadlines compete for the same weeks.

What CSCA preparation lacks is a target score. There is nothing to derive one from: no pass mark exists, and competitiveness is measured by a percentile that cannot be known in advance. The working objective is a different one, to close the sections of the official syllabus that the school course never covered.

The mistakes that recur

• Treating the requirement as national. Requirements differ between universities to the point where no general answer is possible: in the 2026 cycle Zhejiang University required the CSCA of everyone, and Tsinghua University of no one.
• Registering before the programme list exists. The set of subjects is defined by the programme, and subjects cannot be changed after registration. The reverse order leads to paying twice.
• Choosing the language for convenience. The language follows the programme. Fudan University expressly forbids applicants to Chinese-taught programmes from sitting the English version, and Zhejiang requires the English version for English-taught programmes.
• Assuming an English-taught programme removes the exam. It removes Professional Chinese, but not mathematics, physics and chemistry in English.
• Confusing the CSCA with proof of language. They are separate requirements that apply at the same time: a university may ask for both the HSK and the CSCA, and neither replaces the other.
• Planning from the exam date rather than the application deadline. A university may accept the results of particular sittings only, in which case what matters is not whether the result is valid but which sitting produced it.
• Reading a minimum requirement as competitiveness. A formal requirement governs eligibility for review; selection is made on the application as a whole, and the university sees the percentile among the international field as well as the mark.
• Looking for a pass mark. None exists, either for the exam or at the universities checked. The figures that circulate on third-party sites are not supported by any primary source.

What to check yourself, and what is worth checking together

The mechanics of the exam are published and verifiable: the subjects, the format, the fee, the validity of the result and the syllabus for each subject are all in the open, and the primary sources are named at the end of this article. They can be worked through independently.

The harder part is different. The CSCA requirement is one layer of scrutiny among several, and on its own it says nothing about a candidate's prospects. For a particular profile, what has to be assessed separately is eligibility against the programme's formal requirements, the competitiveness of the academic record, the language route and the choice of Professional Chinese version, the funding available, and the application calendar in which the exam date has to line up with the university's admission window. These five are connected: changing the language route changes the subjects, and choosing the scholarship route changes the deadlines.

That is the work EDMONT takes on in supporting applications to China: we establish the requirements from the official documents of specific programmes for the current cycle, settle the subjects and the language of the paper, build the university list around the candidate's profile, and bring the examination, application and scholarship calendars into one.