.考研
Is .考研 a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .考研, as of 7 October 2026. One applicant claimed it and is out. We keep the entry on the record either way.
- Journey To The West
A Chinese exam-prep keyword with a big audience but slim odds of real websites choosing it over .com or .cn.
test-prep companies, tutoring platforms, and content sites serving Chinese postgraduate-exam candidates, plus universities' recruiting and admissions-info pages
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round; a Chinese-script IDN (“grad school exam”, A-label xn--w8y32o). Their catalog line: “The exam that opens the door to graduate study.”
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet in the same market: a two-character Chinese common noun naming a high-stakes life-transition activity, sold to the domestic service industry built around that activity (agencies, platforms, content sites), and dependent on Chinese users accepting a Chinese-script suffix as their primary identity.
Same kind of word doing the same job — an unowned generic activity noun for the learn/prep vertical whose natural registrants are tutoring outfits, cram schools and course sellers — but pitched at the whole English-speaking education market rather than one nation's single gating exam.
Also a generic postgraduate-credential term whose entire economy is admissions and test prep, so the buyer profile (programs, coaching firms, applicant communities) matches closely, though it names the qualification you end up with rather than the exam-sitting act itself.
What a .考研 domain is
.考研 is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. Nobody is chasing .考研 today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .考研 domain extension real yet?
.考研 is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. Nobody has applied for it on the public record; the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round is the process that would decide whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .考研 domain?
You can’t yet. A .考研 name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .考研 was .招聘, delegated on 24 January 2018.
Is .考研 a real TLD?
Not yet. .考研 is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .考研 and is no longer in it. We keep the entry, and every entry on this page links to its source.
- Journey To The West · now abandonedICANN
- Journey To The West · first recordedJourney To The West Corporation
“.考研 (grad school exam) · Education & Career · “The exam that opens the door to graduate study.””Journey To The West Corporation
- 考研 (the Chinese postgraduate entrance exam) names a genuinely large education vertical with heavy annual search and spending interest, so the string itself is meaningful to a real buyer group. But by analogy — flagged as such — Chinese-script IDN TLDs have broadly failed to become primary identities: even broad strings like .中国 and generic han-character TLDs saw registrations without sustained serious end-use, since Chinese businesses default to .com/.cn with pinyin or brand names. A narrow single-topic IDN faces those same dynamics plus mainland regulatory hurdles for a domain to be operable in China, which qualitatively suppresses end-use further. The applicant is a portfolio filer (323 announced strings, 69 Chinese-script IDNs per the verified facts), which suggests per-string marketing attention will be spread thin. I place it in the 10-29 vanity/narrow band: above 1-9 because a real, monetized vertical could plausibly use a handful of these as campaign or landing addresses, but below 30-49 because neither volume registrations nor a meaningful brand signal is likely within 5 years. Main market uncertainty: whether any major Chinese test-prep platform would ever adopt an IDN domain even for marketing, given the sector's entrenched .com/.cn habits.