The University of New Hampshire says it will start accepting scores from the Chinese exam, making it the first flagship state school in the United States to evaluate Chinese applicants using the results from that test, known as the gaokao.

There are 377,000 Chinese students in the United States, representing more than one-third of all international students, according to the federal government. Since they often pay full tuition, they are an important source of revenue for American universities, which have been intensifying their efforts to recruit Chinese students.

Erika Mantz, spokeswoman for the University of New Hampshire, said the gaokao program was meant to attract “outstanding Chinese high school graduates” after they get their test results in late June. The university — which had 781 international students last fall, almost half of them from China — has introduced a recruiting website in Chinese and English.