Pre-admission documents for China: the forms the scholarship guide accepts

A pre-admission document is a document issued by the university you are applying to, and the Application Guide for Chinese Government Scholarship makes it a required item for all applicants. The guide names two forms — a pre-admission notice issued by the university's international students' admission department, and an invitation letter from a school or a professor — and closes with "etc.", so those two are examples rather than a complete list. A letter from a professor can therefore be one of the accepted forms, and the guide does not rank the forms or describe how any university issues them.

What item 7 of the scholarship guide says

Item 7 of the Application Guide for Chinese Government Scholarship reads: "All applicants must provide a pre-admission document issued by the universities applying. Pre-admission documents include pre-admission notice issued by the international students' admission department or invitation letter from the schools or professors, etc."

Three points follow from that wording:

• The issuer is the university applied to, not an agency, a supervisor acting privately, or any other body.
• "Include" and "etc." make the list open-ended. A document that is not one of the two named forms can still be a pre-admission document, as long as it is issued by that university.
• The two named forms are set side by side. Nothing in item 7 gives one form more weight than the other.

The provisions quoted on this page do not cover what a pre-admission document must contain, what format it must take, or how long it remains valid.

The two named forms

Form named in item 7	Issuer, as worded in the guide
Pre-admission notice	The international students' admission department of the university applied to
Invitation letter	A school or a professor of that university
Any other document covered by "etc."	The university applied to

Both named forms come from the university itself. Which form you end up with is not something the guide directs; it lists what the university's documents may look like.

The list is open, and the guide does not rank it

Because item 7 uses "include" and "etc.", the two forms are not a closed pair, and the guide does not say that one is stronger evidence than another. A planning suggestion: treat the wording as what it is — a description of documents the university may issue — and ask the university applied to which document it can give you, rather than trying to obtain the form you think ranks highest. That is a suggestion, not a requirement in the quoted texts.

The requirement belongs to the scholarship. The guide's eligibility and document rules are conditions of the Chinese Government Scholarship, which the guide covers under categories including the Bilateral Program, the University Program, designated scholarship programs and the Student Exchange Program; they are not general admission rules for students who apply to a university without that scholarship.

A pre-admission document is not the admission notice

The two are different steps with different decision-makers.

Under the Measures for the Administration of Schools Recruiting and Educating International Students (Order No. 42 of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security), a higher education institution formulates and publishes its own international student admissions brochure in accordance with the national enrollment regulations, and recruits international students under the conditions and procedures set out in that brochure (Order No. 42, Article 11). The institution examines the admission qualifications and the financial guarantee proof of applicants who apply, and examines or assesses them; admission of international students is decided by the institution, and an applicant who does not meet the enrollment conditions must not be recruited (Order No. 42, Article 12). The Measures are published in Chinese; the English on this page is this site's own translation of that text.

For the scholarship itself, the guide places the decision later in the process. Under step 5, the application receiving agency submits the recommended candidates list and their application documents; under step 6, the China Scholarship Council organizes designated universities and experts concerned to examine applicants' eligibility and academic performance before finalizing the short-list candidates; under step 7, the China Scholarship Council notifies the admission results to the application receiving agency, which then has the applicant informed. A pre-admission document is therefore an input to a process the scholarship authority completes, not the outcome of it.

Where the document fits in the application process

The guide sets out the process in seven steps:

1. Learn about the designated universities and the majors they offer, and identify the preferred scholarship program, designated university and major.
2. Reach the designated university for admission documents.
3. Reach an application receiving agency for a recommendation.
4. Fill in and submit the Application Form for Chinese Government Scholarship online through the Chinese Government Scholarship Information System, at campuschina.org.
5. The application receiving agency submits the recommended candidates list and their application documents.
6. The China Scholarship Council organizes designated universities and experts concerned to examine eligibility and academic performance before finalizing the short-list candidates.
7. The China Scholarship Council notifies the admission results to the application receiving agency, which subsequently has the applicant informed.

The pre-admission document belongs to step 2, before the online form is submitted at step 4. The receiving agency's recommendation at step 3 and the China Scholarship Council's short-listing at step 6 come after it.

What the Ministry's older page adds

The Ministry of Education's English page on applying for the scholarship, dated 17 September 2009, describes the same division of work: the China Scholarship Council reviews the application documents received from the designated authorities to make necessary adjustments on the proposed institutions, and applications that do not comply with the recruitment regulations or whose documents are incomplete will not be processed. Qualified applications are forwarded to the institutions, and the final decision whether to admit an applicant is made by the institutions.

That 2009 page also says that if an applicant has been contacted by or admitted by an institution listed in the directory prior to application, the applicant is requested to enclose the relevant admission letters for the reference of the host institution — wording that treats earlier contact with an institution as reference material rather than as a decision. It states that scholarship applicants accepted by Chinese institutions will be officially confirmed as Chinese Government Scholarship students with endorsement from the Ministry of Education, and that the China Scholarship Council will send the List of Admitted Students, the Admission Notice and the Visa Application Form for Study in China (JW201) to the relevant dispatching authorities by 31 July, for onward forwarding to students.

The page is dated 2009 and was partly written for an earlier intake. The dates that apply now are set by the application receiving authority handling your case; read that page for the division of responsibilities it describes, not for current timing.

Questions people ask

Is an acceptance letter from a professor enough on its own?

Under item 7 of the scholarship guide, an invitation letter from a school or a professor is one of the named forms of pre-admission document, so it answers the item 7 requirement in that sense. It is still a document the university issues, and admission is decided separately by the institution under its own admissions brochure (Order No. 42, Articles 11 and 12), with the scholarship short-list finalized by the China Scholarship Council under steps 5 to 7 of the guide's process.

Is the pre-admission document the same as the admission notice?

No. The guide requires the pre-admission document at step 2 of the process. The institutions make the final decision on admission, and for the scholarship the China Scholarship Council finalizes the short-list and notifies the results. The Ministry's 2009 page describes the Admission Notice as part of what the China Scholarship Council sends to the dispatching authorities after admission.

Does the scholarship guide set an application deadline?

The page carrying the guide has no publication date and no academic year, and gives no application deadline. The provisions quoted on this page do not cover the deadline that applies to you; that date comes from the application receiving authority handling your case.

Does item 7 apply to self-funded applicants?

Item 7 is a condition of the Chinese Government Scholarship, stated in that scholarship's application guide. What a university requires from applicants it admits is set out in its own admissions brochure (Order No. 42, Article 11), and the provisions quoted on this page do not cover any university's own document requirements. If you are applying for the scholarship, see /funding/; for the application sequence more broadly, see /applying/.

Sources

• Application Guide for Chinese Government Scholarship — China Scholarship Council (Campus China, campuschina.org)
• Measures for the Administration of Schools Recruiting and Educating International Students (Order No. 42) — Ministry of Education of the PRC (moe.gov.cn)
• Application for the Scholarship of Chinese Government (page dated 17 September 2009) — Ministry of Education of the PRC, English website (en.moe.gov.cn)

Checked 11 October 2026

This page is an unofficial summary; it is not published by or affiliated with the Ministry of Education, the China Scholarship Council, CHSI or any university, it is not legal advice, and the official text and the current notice of the university or authority handling your case prevail if they differ.