China: Nine nations in one?
Thanksgiving turkey conundrum? The solution: Taobao
"Haibao is coming"
Nuclear fallout Beijing: Mao's underground city
'Stateless in Shanghai': Nov. 21 and 22
You may have noticed two otherwise inconspicuous high school students recently featured on the front page of the Xin Jing Bao (The Beijing News), and if not, you probably noticed that something strange was going on earlier this month. In both instances, the gaokao (高考) is to blame.
The gaokao, or the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, is the culmination of 12 years of schooling for more than 10 million Chinese students. As the (almost) sole determinant for college admissions decisions, the gaokao dominates the Chinese educational system as well as the lives of students who intend to matriculate to universities after secondary school.
Those lucky enough to get top scores in their districts (like the two students featured in The Beijing News) become overnight celebrities, earning the admiration and envy of 10 million of their peers. However, even after scoring well on the exams, many students find themselves suffering from "post-exam syndrome" and end up filling the three months between the gaokao and college entrance with nothing but sleeping, eating, and watching TV.
For those unfortunate enough to receive less-than-desirable scores, the future becomes a hazy and unwelcoming place. While the national obsession before the test causes enough stress to unnerve even the strongest student, picking up the pieces after a failed gaokao attempt can be a living nightmare. Many students will opt to spend another entire year studying in order to up their scores, but they are the lucky ones; many have faced mental breakdowns and some even resorted to suicide.
But even with all the hype, is the gaokao really that much harder than other standardized tests across the world? The SAT provides plenty of stress for American students, and there are also plenty of horror stories about Japan's national exams.
Tests like the SAT, though, have none of the finality that the gaokao has--it's easy to take the SAT several times and a bad score is not a death sentence. And even if several countries (like Japan) have similar tests to China, Chinese students still end up devoting more precious hours to studying than their counterparts around the world.
In the end though, does the gaokao do its job? Pretty much no one likes the exam, but it is a very effective and egalitarian system that identifies talented and well-motivated students with decent accuracy. While of course we can't wish for everything, perhaps there may be middle ground between tests like the SAT and the gaokao in the future that retains the fairness of the Chinese system while lowering the stress and obsession. Because God knows that those 10 million gaokao test takers could use a break.
For more, click here, or to try your hand at the gaokao, click here.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
post to facebook
"filling the three months between the gaokao and college entrance with nothing but sleeping, eating, and watching TV."
half the Chinese guys I know are still in that stage, 8 years later
You breifly mentioned what i believe to be the main problem "As the (almost) sole determinant for college admissions decisions". What we do is and why we do it is determined by the future expectations. Chinese students will slave away in highschool and lower level education and do nothing else but study because that is all that is asked of them, a high gaokao score.
then their off to college where their career is determined by the name of their school and relatives "guanxi" and NOT their GPA. So college students go on vacation for four years and when they graduate its very hard for them to go back to that high school work ethic, hence sleeping heads atop folded arms, a very common sight for entry level jobs.
In the American system high school students have many things that they can excell in which will increase their chances of college acceptance; sports, community service, musical and art performance, teacher/employer recommendations..... so high school students live an fairly easy life.
Then comes univeristy when the test results matter, GPA and study ethic is often what will seperate under-grads from post-grads.
does the gaokao do a good job, what is its job??
by your name, ESLinChongqing, i hope you are not really teaching english in chong qing, since you can not even tell the difference between their and they're.
Leishi85,
A typo does not tell much about ESLinChongqing's English level, just like Gaokao should not be the sole determinant of a student's capability. This is the exact point ESLlinChongqing was making, but you ignored all that to stress a typo -- That was a pretty pathetic response you made. If you intend to sound "smart," at least TRY to focus on the issue discussed here.
More and more universities are starting to ignore SAT scores in the US, as a one time performance on one test is not an accurate description of how someone will perform overall in college.
And yet they don't ignore them enough to say "no need" when applying, rather than later.
I think the largest difference between the SAT and the Chinese exam is that the SAT is a *reasoning* test, designed to evaluate how well students can analyze and solve problems, while (as far as I know) the Chinese exam is a *memorization* test which involves remembering everything you've ever been taught. It's a huge distinction and speaks volumes about the differences between American and Chinese educational systems.
No story on GaoKao is complete without watching this great documentary. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/china-prep/introduction/810/
Great job researching Shanghaiist!