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 the 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.