I find the importance placed on gaokao in China over the top. Utterly fascinating. Have any of our forum members taken gaokao? If so please describe the process that took place. thanks.
I don't even remember the full gambit of taking the SAT over 45 years ago. I must have done well I got a full boat scholarship to The Ohio State University. Which I did not use. I joined the USN instead.
As his thread develops I'll post photos & articles etc about gaokao.
For those of you that don't know..
This is a western link however it was one of the better ones I've found.
I don't even remember the full gambit of taking the SAT over 45 years ago. I must have done well I got a full boat scholarship to The Ohio State University. Which I did not use. I joined the USN instead.
As his thread develops I'll post photos & articles etc about gaokao.
For those of you that don't know..
This is a western link however it was one of the better ones I've found.
In China, applying to college is about one thing and one thing only: the gaokao. Gaokao (高考) is short for 普通高等学校招生全国统一考试 (“The National Higher Education Entrance Examination”) and a student’s score on this all-important standardized test is pretty much the only thing that matters when it comes to determining whether or not they can go to college -- and if they can, what schools they can attend.
What doe the gaokao test and when is it held?
The gaokao is held once annually at the end of the school year. Third-year high school students (high school in China lasts three years) generally take the test, although anyone may register for it if they desire to. In generally lasts two or three days. The subjects it tests vary by region, but in many regions it includes:
Chinese language and literature
Mathematics
A foreign language (often English)
One or more subjects of the student’s choice, depending on their preferred major in college (for example Social Studies/Politics, Physics, History, Biology, or Chemistry)
At some point (it varies by region) students are also asked to list the colleges and universities they prefer in several tiers, and ultimately whether they are accepted or rejected will be determined based on their score. Because of this, students who fail the test and thus cannot attend college will sometimes spend another year studying and re-take the test the following year.
What is it like?
As you might imagine, preparing for and taking the gaokao is a grueling ordeal, and students are under huge amounts of pressure from their parents and teachers to do well. The final year of high school, especially, is often focused intensely on preparation for the exam, and it isn’t unheard of for parents to go so far as quitting their own jobs to help their children study during this year. This pressure has even been linked to some cases of depression and suicide amongst Chinese teens, especially those who perform poorly on the exam.
The test is especially famous for its sometimes-inscrutable essay prompts, which can be vague or confusing but to which students must respond well if they hope to achieve a good score. After the test is over, local essay questions are often published in the newspaper, and occasionally become hotly-debated topics.
Because the exam is so important, Chinese society goes to great lengths to facilitate life for the test-takers on testing days. Areas around testing sites are often marked as quiet zones, and nearby construction and even traffic is sometimes halted while students are taking the test to prevent distractions. Police officers, taxi drivers, and other car owners also will often ferry students they see walking the streets to their exam locations for free, to ensure that they are not late for this all-important occasion.
Cheating and bias
Probably needless to say, because the gaokao is so vitally important, there are always students willing to attempt cheating on it, and with modern technology cheating has become a veritable arms race between students, the authorities, and enterprising merchants who offer everything from false erasers and rulers to tiny headsets and cameras connected to off-site helpers using the internet to scan questions and feed you answers. Authorities now often outfit test sites with a variety of signal-blocking electronic devices, but cheating devices of various sorts are still readily available to those foolish or unprepared enough to attempt using them.
The gaokao system has also been accused of regional bias, primarily because schools often set quotas for the number of students they will take from each province, and students from their home province have more available spaces than students from remote provinces. Since the best schools, both high schools and colleges, are mostly in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, this effectively means that students lucky enough to live in those areas are better-prepared to take the gaokao and are able to enter China’s top universities with a lower score than would be needed by students from other provinces. For example, a student from Beijing might be able to get into Tsinghua University (which is located in Beijing and is former president Hu Jintao’s alma mater) with a lower gaokao score than would be necessary for a student from Inner Mongolia.
Another factor is that because each province administers its own version of the gaokao, the test is sometimes demonstrably harder in some areas than others.