Waseda and Other Schools Revoke Admissions Over Test Cheating

Waseda University, Japan's leading private institution, announced on January 9 that it revoked the enrollment of five graduate students in connection with a cheating scandal involving the English-language proficiency test TOEIC.

The university stated that TOEIC scores submitted during the students' graduate school entrance exams were later deemed invalid. The five students are believed to have enrolled in 2025 or the year before.

Waseda also canceled the admission of three applicants who had passed graduate entrance exams but never enrolled. The university also determined that three undergraduate and 41 graduate applicants had cheated and subsequently failed their entrance exams.

*A pendant-style repeater and miniature earphones are seized from a female test-taker, photographed during her questioning at Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters on July 22. (©Saki Maejima)*

One undergraduate student currently enrolled at the university was given an indefinite suspension. Waseda did not disclose the students' affiliations, programs applied to, or nationalities.

The university said that revoking enrollment differs from expulsion, as it nullifies the admission itself, treating it as if it never occurred.

Similar actions have been announced by the University of Tsukuba and Tokyo University of Science.

TOEIC cheating scandal

The scandal came to light in May 2025, when a Chinese graduate student at Kyoto University was arrested at a TOEIC test site in Tokyo.

Police allege the student took the exam repeatedly and used a small wireless microphone to relay answers to other Chinese test-takers inside the venue.

The organization that administers TOEIC later invalidated the test results of 803 examinees who took the exam between May 2023 and June 2024 and were suspected of cheating.

*A miniature microphone seized by police was displayed at the Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters in Tokyo on July 22.*

Impersonation Tactics Spread

In a separate case involving a similar method, police in Ishikawa Prefecture arrested a Chinese national accused of having someone else impersonate him during an online interview for a graduate school entrance exam in 2023.

Ishikawa police said the suspect, a 23-year-old unemployed man identified as Tian Xuyang, was arrested on January 8 on suspicion of obstruction of business by deception.

According to investigators, the suspect passed the exam and was attending a graduate school in the prefecture. The university later found discrepancies between the person who appeared in the interview and the suspect, including differences in facial features and language ability. The university contacted police in May 2025.

In December 2025, the suspect's admission was revoked.