My experience with university application (CUCAS, admissions.cn)

[Pidon]

Hello,

 

I am starting studying in Chongqing this year. Before I applied for university I tried to find information and came across sites like CUCAS and admissions.cn

But the informations I found were not too good, that's why I would like to share my experience with these two sites. Maybe it helps someone in the future.

 

Admissions.cn

 

The website has many universities listed. They provide lists of required documents and inform you about expenses. While some universities have long and good descriptions, others just have close to no information.

When I am looking at a specific program from a university it shows "Updating information...", so maybe the problem is on my site (?).

 

After log in you get access to the download section of each university where you can download the application form. The application form is usually (depends on university) two page pdf file.

You can submit this application file and the pther required documents online.

You do NOT pay anything. Admissions.cn takes no fees and I first had to pay the application fee for the university after they accepted me.

 

They say they can tell you after 2 days if you are likely to be accepted or not. So I asked after 2 days and then I found out that they do not cooperate with this university anymore. (A friend had the same problem, they gave him a list of 6 universities in Beijing they cooperate with, while the website contains 70).

I was writing with a guy from admissions.cn over their official wechat contact. He asked me what I want to study and I told him I would like to do one year language program and then start undergrad studies in Chinese and preferably in Chongqing. He searched for me and sent me a university back (Chongqing University of Science and Technology). Note that this is not the best university in Chongqing that he suggested, the reason is that I already applied for some universities over CUCAS.

The university requested some additional information from me, admissions.cn was like a communication hub for us. I usually answered on the same day and recieved the answer from the university on the next day.

After 5 days I got the message that I was accepted by the university. Note that the university and admissions.cn do not work on the weekend, so without the weekend it would be 3 days.

For other questions I used their Wechat, they answered fast and you can have a conversation, over email it might take them a few hours.

 

CUCAS

 

Before I applied over admissions.cn I sent out applications with CUCAS.

Their website is much better and contains more/better informations about everything. But also here I encountered errors. I applied for a program and then the university wrote CUCAS that this doesn't exist anymore (I think not CUCAS fault).

 

When you apply you fill out an online form and CUCAS will fill out the application for you. And of course you have to provide all other required documents. You also have to pay directly the application fee + CUCAS service fee.

In my case the communication between me and CUCAS was terrible. Their "Documents Verification Specialist" wrote me that I should provide my high school certification. Note: I submitted it in original and english translation at the beginning. After I wrote this back + attached also these documents again, she wrote me that the high school certification does not explicit state when I graduated. I am from Germany and here there is only a date next to the school's signature.

I thought they should have some applications from Germany before, so I asked them if they submitted something else. I also stated that we have no other document (also confirmed that with my school).

They answered "We try to submit your application".

It took them usually 1 day two answer, even the smallest conversation took me a few days and their english was not good, but usually understanable.

 

Now after about one month I still have no answer from them about my application status. They also do not answer any messages that I write them. (This was the reason why I also applied with admissions.cn)

 

If I hear from CUCAS again I will update my report, but until now I can not recommend CUCAS. Their service is not good, even if you pay the 50$ service fee for each application.

But I can highly recommend admissions.cn, their service is really good and they are really friendly.

 

Note: Both websites are not so up to date in my and other people experiences, start asking them about the information early. You can do it while getting all the documents together.

[Saxondale]

This is not the first negative review i've seen about CUCAS - It's a shame since they were fantastic when i used them about 6 years ago when i applied to do a language course in Qingdao.  I guess they didn't have as many customers back then, so were much quicker to respond to issues.

[roddy]

CUCAS have in the past been the target of industrial-scale fake bad review posting. There's background here for anyone who has the time to waste.