HSK registration - how did you do it?

[yonitabonita]

Hi folks

The cut off for HSK registration is tomorrow I'm told. I lined up at Diqiucun for 3 hours today. The office closed before I got to the beginning of the line. I'm thinking there's got to be a better way. Has anyone out there successfully registered themselves?

Grateful for any advice.

Y

[roddy]

Eh? I thought it hadn't even opened yet - see here.

I've registered for the Elem / Int exam before and it's easy. Head to the HSK office at BLCU, I was in and out in minutes. Another year I missed the deadline, but I phoned up and they said external registration points which hadn't sent in their details yet might be able to fit me in. Taxi'd down to Juncheng and signed up there. That was a few years back.

And also here. Although I can see this ending with me finding out I can't read dates, it seems to say that online registration closes in two days, but in person registration runs for a few days early April. Is Diqiucun perchance charging a fee for doing people's online registrations for them?

[yingguoguy]

I'm planning on taking the Elem/Int exam this April too. As I live a couple of hours away from Chengdu I thought that the best and most convenient way would be to use the on-line registration system.

After signing up and selecting the correct test date and site I discovered that, unbelievably, there is no option for paying with my Bank of China card. Agricultural Bank yes, Industrial Bank yes, but not plain old BoC.

No matter I thought, I'll borrow an Agricultural Bank card off our friendly Waiban assistant.

Of course there's loads of stuff you need to download and install on your computer before you can access the payment system on-line. After going through this same process I discover that you can't pay more than 200 yuan on-line with a ABoC card. Cost of test 250 yuan.

So I send a Chinese friend off on the bus into the center of town to get the ABoC's special card. She comes back with the account number and password which completely fail to work. "Yes that happens some times" say the support helpline, "You need to go back the bank and get another account number". But how many times will I need to go back and fourth before getting one that works?

Anyway, luckily while my friend was in the bank, one of the IT guys overheard her talking and offered to come and help get it set up. So after a completely wasted afternoon for my friend I've finally managed to pay for the test.

So I'm happy. For about 5 seconds. Then my friend mentioned that I will need an Admission Ticket, and was surprised that I'd never heard of such a thing. After some searching on the website it does indeed seem that I'll have to go to Chengdu after all to collect this ticket "by the date specified", though I've no idea whether this is this Sunday, the date that Roddys just posted, the day of the test or some other date completely. May have to phone up tomorrow to find this out.

Apparently if I'd applied by mail I could have picked it up the day I arrived at the test center, but the way I'm reading it at the moment it seems like this isn't an option for on-line registeration.

Frustrated.

I was only really doing the HSK for my own edification, and feel completely soured on the whole thing now. Will be looking to see what qualifications in Chinese the Taiwanese government offer this evening...

P.S. Sorry yonitabonita realise this wasn't advice, but more a warning.

[yonitabonita]

OK now I'm confused.

My teacher told us yesterday that from this year onwards there is ONLY an online registration process available. There is no option for fronting up to the BLCU in person to register like there has been in previous years.

There doesn't seem to be anything on the BLCU website that says this.

DQQ aren't charging anyone a monetary fee. Though I think queueing up all that bloody time for nothing cost a bit of my sanity, and of course getting conflicting information between staff members about where I needed to be, what I needed to hand in, and in what format I needed it in probably took about a week off my life.

Was there a fee for registering at Jun Cheng? It's closer to home so would suit me better anyway.

Thanks,

Y

[roddy]

I doubt they'd ever just stop taking in person applications, and I'd be amazed if it happens in the next couple of years.

I don't recall there being any extra fee registering at Juncheng, certainly wouldn't have been anything substantial. However, I'm not sure if they offer the advanced exam, or if you can register at Juncheng then sit at BLCU, etc. You're probably best off just phoning the HSK office - they're not the best organized of folk, but I've always found them to be clear on the methods for transferring your money to their hands.

[gougou]

Somewhere on their page, I read that the in person registration was only offered as a convenience; originally they apparently planned to offer online registration only.

[yonitabonita]

I'm just going to call up both Jun Cheng and the BLCU tomorrow to see what the story is. Will report back in case anyone else is as confused as me.

Y

[<<恒心>>]

I registered online for the Intermediate on Monday evening (US time) and had no problems uploading the photo, etc. I did have a problem with the payment part. Prior to getting to the payment page, it does not state payment what methods are accepted. Once you get to that point, you'll get to a Payease page that lists payments through accounts at the following banks as acceptable: 中国银行, 中国农业银行, 中国建设银行, 超商银行, 广东发展银行, 民生银行, 北京银行, 华夏银行, 兴业银行. There was nothing about using credit cards on this page.

I closed my account at 建设银行 perviously, so I had to enlist the help of a friend in Beijing to get over this hurdle. Once the funds were handed over, I was no longer able to log in, and I never got any sort of confirmation page/ confirmation email/payment number, etc. so be advised ahead of time! Everything appears to be in order, but who knows for sure?

Anyway, if you are overseas and registering, be adivsed re: bank accounts. I don't know if Paypal and Payease have any sort of hookup that might help get around the Chinese bank account problem. However, I did see something about being able to pick up my admission ticket at the test site (BLCU fo me) so hopefully that won't be an issue... something else will!

[magores]

Online registration isn't working for me.

I keep getting this error message:

“/”应用程序中的服务器错误

I'm not putting a / anywhere in my registration, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

On top of that, the Country/Location and Profession fields won't let me enter anything.

Hmmppph is all I have to say.

[yonitabonita]

Magores, I had exactly the same problems - as did a few students in my class - which is why the queue at Diqiucun is so horrifically long. Somehow they know how to get around the glitch.

I called up Juncheng this morning. They confirmed that they do HSK registration there. Final date for registration is April 6. All you need is 250Y for the intermediate exam, two passport photos and your passport. There is no surcharge involved.

They don't do advanced exam registration there.

No one answered at the BLCU. I'm not going to try ringing back - best just going to Juncheng and getting it over and done with.

y

[magores]

Yonita...

Glad (and sorry) to know that I wasn't the only one having issues with the online registration.

I think I'll just haul myself down to BLCU tomorrow or on the 2nd of April to sign up. It's one way to kill an entire day I guess.

magores

[anonymoose]

How do you register in person? I went to Shanghai Normal University to register, and they basically told me to **** off and register on line.

[Laska]

According to to the HSK website, you were going to have to register online at all the test sites that had a check under 网上报名否 on the test site list. No more in-person registration.

Now apparently they are allowing everyone to register in person, starting on 3/28 for the elem and intermediate tests and 4/2 for the advanced test. They probably noticed that most people did not get the message.

But I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of test sites didn't know about the policy shift yesterday.

Most of the useful information is in the box of scrolling announcements on the left hand side of the HSK hompage.