How Outrageous Are ASDAN's Registration Fees?

To borrow the title of a world-changing paper: ASDAN is All You Need (to Avoid).

I have written about ASDAN peripherally before — on PUPC scoring, on the AMC leak, on PUEC results. Those posts stayed careful because some of what I knew was inference. This one does not require inference. Registration fees are a matter of public record. What follows is a direct comparison of what ASDAN charges versus what the same competition costs through the official channel.

Three reasons they do not deserve these fees

First: they did not write the problems. Most of these competitions are set by teachers and academics working voluntarily or for nominal compensation because they believe in the activity. ASDAN acquires regional licensing rights and then resells access at whatever margin the market will bear. As UKMT explicitly states on its own website: "As a charity, we do not make a profit from entry fees." The markup does not flow back to the people who created the competition.

Second: the margin is indefensible on its face. PhysicsBowl costs $10 per student in the United States. ASDAN charges RMB 300. The Princeton University Physics Competition (PUPC) is run on a volunteer basis — the organisers will mark your paper whether or not you pay anything. ASDAN charges RMB 491 for the privilege of submitting to a free competition.

Third: the service quality does not hold up. On PUPC specifically: I have personally handled a remarking request. A script with untidy handwriting was awarded 16 points by the ASDAN-sourced markers. I re-marked it against the standard: 60 points — which is a global top-50 score. The 2023 PUPC results were never published on the official site. For a competition charging nearly RMB 500 per entry, that is not acceptable.

Fee comparison table

All fees converted to RMB at the exchange rates prevailing in June 2024. Where ASDAN charges HKD or other currencies, those are also converted.

Four conclusions worth sitting with

1. AMC fees are low, so something else must compensate — presumably the leak pipeline. 2. The more obscure the competition, the higher the multiplier: the JHMT at 20.8× is the record holder. 3. When ASDAN approached these competition organisers about licensing, did they disclose that they are a for-profit entity? Several of these organisations publish explicit non-profit statements. 4. If the average markup across competitions is approximately 4×, how should one price ASDAN's research programmes, commercial competitions, and study tours?

The practical conclusion is simple: you can register directly through the official channel, pay the real fee, and receive marking by independent assessors who have no financial stake in your result. There is no service ASDAN provides that compensates for the markup — and in several documented cases, the service quality has actively harmed students.

"The animals knew perfectly well how to live without human management. Once humans arrived and made arrangements for them, the theme of most of those animals' lives became: misery." — Wang Xiaobo