There has been a slight improvement after three consecutive years of decline. The number of applicants for China’s 2027 graduate school entrance examination is 3.47 million.

China’s 2027 national master’s degree entrance examination will be held on December 19 and 20. According to statistics, the number of applicants for China’s national master’s degree entrance examination in 2027 is 3.47 million. It is recovering after three consecutive years of decline.

Observer.com reported that the number of applicants for China’s postgraduate entrance examination reached a high of 4.74 million in 2023, dropped to 4.38 million in 2024, and then dropped to 3.88 million in 2025, falling below the 4 million mark for the first time in ten years; It declined again in 2026 and the number of applicants reached 3.43 million. The number of applicants for China’s national master’s degree entrance examination in 2027 has increased by 40,000 compared with 2026.

At the same time, the number of applicants for public examinations (civil service examinations) and official examinations (obtaining official establishment) in China has also changed. According to Chinese official data, 3.45 million people will pass the national examination qualifications in 2027, a decrease of 268,000 from last year. It has fallen for the first time after rising for many years.

On February 28, China’s National Bureau of Statistics released the “2025 National Economic and Social Development Statistical Bulletin”, showing that China’s graduate education enrollment in 2025 will be 1.438 million, including 4.3 million postgraduate students and 1.167 million undergraduates.

Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said in a previous interview that although the problem of “advancing educational qualifications” still exists, its cost-effectiveness is rapidly declining. The employment situation of graduate students is no better than that of graduate (undergraduate) graduates. The devaluation of graduate academic qualifications and the “higher academic qualification less employability” force college students to no longer regard graduate school as a safe haven for employment. Developing your core employability competitiveness is more important than a higher level of education.

In addition, Professor Hu Jiangdong of the Measurement and Evaluation Research Center of Central China Normal University once said that the “postgraduate entrance examination craze” has entered the adjustment stage from inertial development, showing a phase-wise trend of “high-level feedback and rational stabilization”.