Applying student visa in China how long before start date courses?

Going to China on November 7th 2018 on a L for 30 days, planning to go to university to enroll and pay for a Chinese language semester which starts end of February/begin March 2019, can they already give me the JW documents in November? If not, what is the maximum time before start of the classes they can give the documents and thus can I apply the student (X2 I guess)?