CUSPEA

CUSPEA (China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application, 李政道奖学金) was an examination and admission system used by the physics departments of some American and Canadian universities for graduate school admission from People's Republic of China between 1979 and 1989. It was created by the Chinese-American Nobel laureate in physics Professor Tsung-Dao Lee (诺贝尔物理学奖得主李政道教授) and Chinese physics community as an alternative graduate school admission procedure. At that time in China, higher education was still recovering from the Cultural Revolution; school transcripts and recommendation letters were difficult to evaluate. Furthermore, standardized tests such as the Graduate Record Examination were unavailable in China. The CUSPEA exam was in English and had a similar scope to that of Ph.D. written qualifying exams in major American universities. The questions were prepared by physics professors from participating North American universities—starting with Columbia University where Lee worked, and eventually expanded to 97 universities. Committees of physicists in China administer and grade the exams. The examinees are usually senior physics majors from top-ranking Chinese universities. Those who passed the exam are followed up by an interview by a small American delegation. According to US physicist Sam Treiman, early applicants to the program included many older students, whose education had been interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. Final admission to U.S. graduate schools depended on mutual agreement between the applicant and participating physics departments. Each year, more than 600 Chinese students pre-selected from dozens of top Chinese universities and institutes entered the CUSPEA exam. Among them, about 100 Chinese students selected by their CUSPEA exam scores entered the subsequent application process to go to their PhD studies in the US. Over the years, a total of 915 students went to the US through this program.