Latest news with #Project211
NDTV
17-07-2025
- General
- NDTV
Explained: Why China's Gaokao Is Considered The World's Toughest Exam
The Gaokao exam, considered one of the toughest in the world, requires students to take extreme measures to achieve top scores - including "use of IV drips, meant to help them concentrate while studying", "teenage girls taking contraceptives to delay their periods until after the test", and enduring poor quality and quantity of sleep, according to South China Morning Post (SCMP). What is Gaokao and How Did It Get So Hard? Gaokao, a Chinese word meaning "high test," refers to the National Higher Education Entrance Examination. It is typically conducted every June and lasts about 10 hours over multiple days. The Gaokao examination tests three main subjects- Mathematics, Chinese Language and a Foreign Language and three other subjects specific to the students' education and career goals. The other subjects are chosen from Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Politics, History and Geography. As per the South China Morning Post, some questions that have appeared in the recent Mathematics examinations were considered beyond high school level. In mainland China, Gaokao is the only exam that determines whether a student can get into a university or not. College entrance exams around the world are divided into two main categories - assessment and selective examinations. Assessment examinations such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) examination is US reflect the overall academic knowledge of the students, while selective examinations like China's Gaokao and "suneung" in South Korea help select students directly for top universities. More than 10 million candidates have appeared for the GAOKAO examinations since 2019 and in 2024, of the 13.4 million candidates who took the test, only 40 per cent could score enough to get admission in university. There are 2,820 higher education institutions in China and of them, only 115 have been included in Project 211, a program that determines the Institute's excellence in education. Getting admission into these universities is expected to help students secure a bright future ahead. The national average acceptance rate at Project 211 schools is only 5 per cent, meaning that in 2024, each of the top 115 universities admitted, on average, just 5,800 students out of 13.4 million applicants. On an average, Chinese students spent 60 hours per week studying and some even stop going to Middle school to solely focus on their Gaokao exam with the help of private tutor. The pressure of Gaokao begins early, often in middle school, and is known to cause severe stress, anxiety, and depression. More than half of the students who committed suicide in Shenzen, China did so while under extreme pressure, as per the report published by Shenzen's bureau of education.
Hindustan Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Private Revolutions: Read an excerpt from Yuan Yang's new book on China
On Sunday afternoons, which were sometimes the only spare time she had in the week, June would scrub her clothes by hand while resenting the time she had to waste doing so. She relieved her boredom by listening to podcasts on her smartphone. She particularly liked the speeches of Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental, the country's biggest private education company. . (.) In 2013, around the time June started high school, a film had been released loosely based on Yu's life called American Dreams in China. Filled with slapstick comedy, it describes the lives of three young men from poor backgrounds who dream of studying in the US. The character based on Yu is repeatedly denied an entry visa, but the three end up founding an English-language tuition company together and striking it rich. The film includes several dramatic shots of Yu's speeches, superimposed against a stadium of cheering fans: he is a rock star, easy and confident. By the time the film was released, Yu had become a dollar billionaire and was known in China as the godfather of English teaching. A witty public speaker with a self-deprecating sense of humour, Yu liked to mix personal anecdotes with pep talks:Hew a stone of hope out of a mountain of despair and you can make your life a splendid the beginning, there were no roads in the world; only as people began travelling did roads come into being. Successful roads are formed not when people roam aimlessly, but when they are headed in the same direction. The same is true for New Oriental; it was formed as people gathered to study. *** June carried on being the top in her class, but she knew it wasn't that good a class. As the three years of high school passed by, university drew nearer. Far from being a dream, it was becoming inevitable. The only uncertainty was where she'd end up. China has around 1,400 universities that grant undergraduate degrees. About a hundred of these belong to the 'Project 211' group of elite universities, where less than half a million students enter each year. The competition to squeeze into China's top universities is higher than almost anywhere else in the world. Overall, China's 211 group admit five out of every hundred students who apply, the same rate as Harvard University. Beijing's Peking University accepts just one in a hundred applicants. *** Being from a family with a Beijing hukou helps tremendously, because universities have a quota for local students. In one year, Beijing's two top universities took 84 out of every 10,000 applicants from Beijing but fewer than 5 out of every 10,000 applicants from some of China's poorest provinces, including June's. June aimed high for her top five choices. For number 6, her fall-back option, she chose a local university, one she was sure to get into. Towards the end of high school, Teacher Song visited June in the county town where she was studying. Squeezed between June's classes and her evening study session, Teacher Song took June for dinner at a Western restaurant that had just opened. That invitation in itself – to eat Western food – sounded like a luxury to June, who had spent the previous week eating from street-food stalls. Sitting in the restaurant, Teacher Song poured tea for June from a glass teapot filled with large owers steeped in a light pink liquid. After they finished eating and got up to leave, June held on to Teacher Song tightly and cried, not knowing when they would see each other again after she finished school: whether she went to university or out to work, she would have to go far from her home town. 'I hope you live very well,' Teacher Song said. (Excerpted with permission from Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang, published by Bloomsbury; 2024)
