Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Record 13 million to sit ‘world’s toughest’ college entrance exam
The Nationwide Unified Examination for Admissions to General
Universities and Colleges, usually mentioned as Gaokao (Higher Exam) is China’s
annual national undergraduate admission exam, which is held in early June every
year. The grueling test lasts nine hours in two days, including Chinese, math, English,
and either science subjects like physics and chemistry or arts subjects like
history and political science. The exam scores are used for university
admissions. For example, top universities like Peking and Tsinghua require a minimum
of around 680 out of the maximum score of 750. In 2000, there were 3.7 million
Gaokao test takers, and nearly 60% of them were admitted to colleges. In the
last five years, over 10 million students took Gaokao tests and more than 85% of
them were accepted by colleges. This year, a record 13.4 million students took
the two-day exams. Since most high school students are their parent’s only children, they
are desperately expected to get better scores to enter good universities, even
though over 20% of college graduates have been unable to find jobs in
recent years. Chinese students seem to be studying under extremely heavy pressure and
intense competition.
Read the article and learn about China’s national college entrance exams.
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