The CSCA, explained
The China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA) is the entrance exam for international students applying to bachelor’s programmes in China. From the 2026/2027 academic year, applicants to Chinese Government Scholarship universities must take it. Our figures come from a question-by-question analysis of real papers from each sitting.
Exam schedule at a glance
Dates csca.cn has not announced yet show the month only, and times marked (estimated) come from the previous sitting. All times are Beijing time, and csca.cn has the final word.
Why we built this on the Chinese curriculum
We tagged the real CSCA papers in our bank, question by question, against both the official syllabus and the Chinese school curriculum. The results are the same across sittings: the exam stays within what Chinese students learn in grades 10 and 11, and it covers far less than the syllabus lists. Nearly half of the syllabus topics have never appeared.
So instead of paraphrasing the syllabus, we rebuilt our question bank on the Chinese secondary-school knowledge system itself: every question in our bank maps to the textbook chapter it comes from.
That matters most if you came through IB, A-Levels or another system. Your gap is usually a few specific chapters that Chinese students learned in a different order. Because our bank knows the chapter behind every question, it can name your missing prerequisites and drill exactly those.
Exam format at a glance
The official syllabus doesn't faithfully reflect what the papers actually test, so we measured the real 2025-2026 papers instead.
Scoring: each subject is marked 0 to 100 and comes with a global percentile. No official per-question mark scheme is published. With no penalty for wrong answers, treat every question as equal weight and answer them all. Universities read subjects separately; some sum them (e.g. out of 300 across three subjects).
Chinese Language
Eighty single-choice questions in 90 minutes: vocabulary in context, character knowledge and reading. It tests the academic Chinese used in first-year classes, which differs from the everyday Chinese tested in HSK. Includes question groups sharing one option pool, a format worth practising in advance.
More →Mathematics
Functions, sets and algebra carry roughly half of every paper. Stems are short and symbol-dense (the median is under 90 characters) and word problems are rare. About half of each sitting is fundamentals; only a handful of questions are genuinely hard. At 75 seconds per question, speed is the skill.
More →Physics
The paper with the most fundamentals in our tagging: roughly two thirds of questions are fundamentals, and genuinely hard ones are rare. Mechanics and electrostatics have the largest share of questions, and a quarter to a third of questions come with a figure, so reading a setup fast is a scoring skill.
More →Chemistry
Broad but shallow, with the heaviest reading load of the three sciences: over half the questions sit at standard textbook level, and about four in ten are "which of the following statements is correct". Precise reading earns as many marks as chemistry knowledge.
More →Exam-day timetable
Next sitting: …
| Beijing time (UTC+8) | Your local time | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Chinese Language | 14:00–15:30 | …–… |
| Day 1 | Mathematics | 17:00–18:00 | …–… |
| Day 2 | Physics | 14:00–15:00 | …–… |
| Day 2 | Chemistry | 16:30–17:30 | …–… |
Every sitting in your time zone (first paper)
| Sitting | Beijing time (UTC+8) | Your local time | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11 | 14:00 | … | |
| 2026-12 | 08:00 | … | |
| 2027-01 | 14:00 | … | |
| 2027-03 | 14:00 | … | |
| 2027-04 | 14:00 | … | |
| 2027-06 | 08:00 | … |
Converted to your device time zone (…) on the actual exam dates. The official schedule is published in Beijing time, so check your admission ticket before exam day. Since November 2026 every sitting runs over two days. The first paper starts at 14:00 Beijing time, except in December and June, when it starts at 08:00.
Home-proctored candidates need two devices: the exam computer plus a phone or tablet as a second camera. On exam day, have your passport, a printed admission ticket and scratch paper ready.
How to prepare, and what we give you at each step
Four steps. Each one tells you what you get out of it, and what this site hands you along the way.
Sit one real paper first
Take a real past exam under real timing to find your starting score and get used to 75 seconds per question. We give you a per-topic score breakdown that shows where you lost marks.
Practise your weak topics first
Filter the question bank to your weak topics. Nearly half of the syllabus topics have never appeared in a real paper, so practising every topic takes time away from the ones that are tested. Every question has a full worked solution.
Keep your misses in one place
Star every question you miss. You get a personal error list in your account; members also get similar-question drilling, up to five same-pattern variations per question, so you practise each weak pattern several times.
Finish under exam conditions
In the final weeks, run full-length mocks in our recreation of the official exam interface: same timer, question grid and mark-for-review flow. You get an exam day with zero interface surprises.
This page is compiled from public information and our own analysis of real papers as of 2026. Policies, sittings and university requirements change; for registration and final requirements always rely on the official platform csca.cn and your target universities.