Yang Xiao, 31, from Shenyang in Liaoning Province, scored 388 in the exam he sat last December, 34 points above the cutoff.
He received his admission letter last month and will study intangible cultural heritage and digital innovation at Tsinghua's Academy of Arts and Design, he told Chinese news outlet Jiupai News.
He is now teaching himself GRE and TOEFL and hopes to apply for a fully funded doctorate at Harvard, the South China Morning Post reported.
Yang wanted Tsinghua before he reached secondary school. His grades were ordinary and his parents, worried he would not reach university at all, enrolled him in a private vocational art school with a single college-prep class.
He finished first in his year in studio subjects and once first in the whole school academically. At the gaokao, China's college entrance exam, he considered Tsinghua's art academy. But the cram class he had joined taught in the style of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and that is where he was admitted.
