It's important to note that the Chinese imperial examination system had a significant influence on the development of similar systems in Europe. Competitive exams in China date back at least to the Han dynasty. The appearance of exams in Europe happened comparatively late. And they were not examinations in the sense that we would understood it today. They were ceremonial oral confirmations by a candidate that they understood the material. For example, in a medieval university at Bologna:

As Rashdall says, it is a curious fact that "we have no express evidence of the existence... of any examination whatsover. When a candidate presented himself before the Chancellor for the License in Arts, he had to swear that he 'heard' certain books and nine Regent Masters... were required to testify or 'depose' to their 'knowledge' of his sufficiency... whether the Masters had any other means of judging of the candidate's knowledge and capacity than had been afforded by his performances in the various disputations required for the degree cannot be pronounced with certainty.

European sources begin to describe the Chinese examination system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that, usually in a favorable light. In Samuel Purchas' Hakluytus Posthumous (1599), he writes that Chinese magistrates "are elected from those who passed the examination" and "by reason of this excellent order and harmony of magistrates placed one under another... for obtaining of any disgnity or magistrates, the way is open without all respect of gentry or blood, unto all men, if they be learned." In the 18th century, Voltaire writes "the human mind certainly cannot imagine a government better than this one where everything is to be decided by the large tribunals subordinated to each other, of which the members are received only after several severe examinations. Everything in China regulates itself by these tribunals." The French briefly experimented with a civil service exams in 1791, which lasted a decade, and authors such as Ferdinand Brunetière suggested an influence by "l'esprit chinois."

British colonial administrators and diplomatic officials were aware of the Chinese exams, and some were staunchly in favor of adopting it. Recommendations for adopting the Chinese system appears throughout the nineteenth century in the works of Charles Gutzlaff, W.H. Medhurst, and Thomas Taylor Meadows. In the Desultory Notes (1847), Meadows states that he returned from China to London for the purpose of "urg[ing] the institution of Public Service Competitive Examination for all British subjects with a view to the Improvement of the British Executive and the Union of the British Empire." Meadows claims, "the long duration of the Chinese empire is solely and altogether owing to the good government which consists in the advancement of men of talent and merit only." At first, the Chinese examination system was adopted by the British only for the colonial administration of India. In 1835, Robert Ingles reports in Chinese Repository, "The full development in India of this Chinese invention [civil service exams] is destined one day, perhaps, like those of gunpowder and printing, to work another great change in the states-system even of Europe." Even the French would adopt the British examination system for their administration of Indochina.

In 1853, Trevelyan and Northcote (who had both previous;y served in the East India Company) published the "Report on the Indian Civil Service", and advocated for the adoption of civil service exams in England. Parliamentary debates ensued over the issue. Some critics of the system sarcastically remarked on its perceived Chinese influences. Bailie Cochrane writes that the English "did not know that it was necessary for them to take lessons from the Celestial Empire." But with the Order in Council of June 4, 1870, competitive exams were established for British civil servants.

Teng, Ssu-Y ü. "Chinese Influence on the Western Examination System," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, VII (1943), 267-312