Pearly gates of Fudan and Jiaotong open for 600 students

Most everyone has an opinion about the Chinese educational system and what needs to be changed. The general consensus is that there ought to be less emphasis on the scores from the national university entrance examination and more of a focus on a person's ability on the whole. Shanghai's two top-flight universities, Fudan and Jiaotong, are among the few universities in China broadly experimenting with new admissions criteria which involve interviews and consideration of extracurricular activities. On April 5, they started mailing the early admissions letters, and expect to make a more public announcement on the 15th.

A total of 298 students for Fudan and 300 for Jiaotong will receive notification of early admission, though in actuality this is different from, for example, the American system of early admissions to elite private universities. When those universities give you the offer, it's an official offer, whereas Fudan and Jiaotong won't give you the official notification until you've passed the entrance examination lest you lapse into a state of protracted senioritis.

Photo from tigersweat.com.