The real exam is bigger than the official syllabus
The official CSCA syllabus is far narrower than the real exam: judged against the document, many real questions are out of syllabus, because the real scope contains and exceeds it. We analyzed every question of every CSCA sitting and found that real scope: math, physics and chemistry test what Chinese students learn in Years 10-11, and the Chinese Language subject tests the HSK 7-9 range. So instead of trusting the document, we rebuilt the exam from the papers themselves: exactly which topics come up, and how often.
What each subject actually weights
A few topic areas make up most of every paper, and the mix barely changes between sittings. The real scope of math, physics and chemistry falls entirely inside the gaokao system; the Chinese Language subject likewise does not match its official syllabus, its real range is HSK levels 7-9, and we filtered real HSK questions the same way for its mock pool. The charts show the real topic shares for each subject.
Share of each topic area, measured across the 2025-2026 papers.
Why we use real gaokao questions
The real CSCA scope sits entirely inside the gaokao syllabus. Tens of millions of students take the gaokao every year, so there is a large archive of real gaokao questions to practise from. The full gaokao goes further than the CSCA: derivative-heavy calculus, conic-section proofs, polar coordinates, inverse trigonometry and three-view drawings are standard gaokao topics, and none of them appear in the CSCA. Practising from general gaokao material spends nearly half your time on topics that never appear. We went through the gaokao archive question by question and kept the 2,800+ real questions that match the CSCA’s real scope.
Difficulty distribution
From syllabus to your practice: one topic, traced end to end
Every topic in our bank can be followed through the same chain. Here is one, with real numbers:
The syllabus names it
“Ionic reactions and ion tests” is one of the 12 chemistry topic areas in the official syllabus.
Real papers test it
We tagged all 184 released chemistry questions: this topic carries 7.1% of the real papers, 13 questions, mostly at standard difficulty.
Our bank matches it
166 practice questions cover this topic: 160 free, graded from fundamentals up to exam level, plus 6 in the premium mock sets. The share matches the topic’s share in the real papers.
You drill it
Filter the chemistry bank to this topic and work through it, every question with a full worked solution.
Practice chemistry →How a question earns its place
Every question on this site passes the same five gates before you see it:
Blueprint
Written to a pattern taken from real papers: the question type, the solution method and the three most common wrong answers.
Format gates
A script tests the structure, answer-key balance and duplicate fingerprints of every question, and rejects any question that fails.
Independent re-solve
Each question is solved again from scratch, without sight of the intended answer. The two answers must agree.
Editorial review
Our team reviews every question by hand before it goes live.
Published, and accountable
Every question has a full worked solution and a report button. Confirmed error reports earn the reporter free membership days.