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Admission to regular HEIs in China is usually dependent on high school graduation and gaokao scores. However, while the gaokao is the most important admission criterion, there are a few variations. As noted before, applicants to vocational colleges can be admitted via a separate examination without taking the gaokao. Admission to adult higher education institutions, or adult education programs at regular universities, meanwhile, is based on the National Adult College Entrance Examination (also known as the “adult gaokao”). Applicants are expected to have academic skills on par with recent high school graduates, but a high school diploma is not required for admission.

On the other side of the spectrum, top institutions are permitted to administer their own written examinations or conduct interviews in addition to the gaokao. Students who pass these exams or interviews can be admitted based on lower gaokao scores—a process that lessens the importance of the gaokao and gives applicants another chance to be admitted to their institution of choice. However, only students from select top-performing high schools are eligible for this type of independent recruitment. What’s more, the MOE stipulates that only 5 percent of incoming students can be selected through this process, while the other 95 percent must be admitted based on the gaokao In addition, the MOE in 2019 issued ten strict guidelines that HEIs have to follow when admitting students independently.

what is the “gaokao”

Held over a two- to three-day period in early June each year, the gaokao is an extremely high stakes exam that can have a traumatizing effect on students and parents alike. As the Wall Street Journal describes it, the test can have life-altering consequences for Chinese students:

“There are minimum gaokao levels required to attend [most] of China’s … colleges, and only about two-thirds as many available admissions slots as test takers. Sliding into the lower third of marks means, at a minimum, losing a year and going through the whole horrible experience of cramming all over again. At worst, it means dropping the dream of college and taking a low-paying, dead-end manufacturing or service job, or turning to a junior college to learn basic vocational skills. But for those who do well, the gaokao is life-altering. Being among the 8.5 percent of test takers who score high enough to qualify for one of China’s … tier-one universities, means reasonable assurance of eventual high-paying white-collar employment, thereby securing a stable financial future.”

Students usually take the test in the final year of high school after preparing for it the entire year, but it’s possible to retake the exams indefinitely after graduation from high school.

Given the stakes, there’s also a fair amount of cheating—a fact that results in testing facilities deploying security cameras, metal detectors, electronic signal jammers, and drones, as well as iris and fingerprint scanners to prevent hired test takers—so-called “gunmen”—from sitting for the exams in place of actual students. In 2016, the Chinese government even opted to threaten cheaters with up to seven years of jail time.

The exam is spread over nine hours and consists of both essay and multiple-choice questions, depending on the subject. Under the new 3+3/3+1+2 system, it will cover Chinese, mathematics, and a foreign language, most typically English, as well as the specialization subjects students elect in high school. In most provinces the final maximum score is 750 (150 each for the compulsory subjects and 100 each for the 3+X electives). Ethnic minority students or athletes may be awarded extra points to facilitate their admission.

However, there are big differences in examination and scoring practices in some jurisdictions, so that the gaokao results in different provinces are difficult to compare directly. For example, Shanghai, Hainan province and Jiangxi province currently have different maximum scores (660, 940, and 480, respectively). In addition, minimum score thresholds for admission into universities vary by province. Universities take into consideration the diverging practices in the different jurisdictions when making admission decisions related to out-of-province students. This means that students from Shanghai applying in Beijing, for instance, have different score requirements than students from other provinces.

Once the gaokao results are in, admission thresholds are set based on the results; these vary by year and institution. Traditionally, universities have been grouped into three tiers with a different minimum score for each tier. “A matrix of provincial quotas, university quotas, and subject quotas is negotiated annually between universities and national and provincial authorities. Nationally, around 10% of candidates receive a Tier 1 score (allowing them to apply to Tier 1 universities), while a further 20% receive a Tier 2 score,” and so on. However, several provinces are currently replacing the tier system with a more elastic approach that will allow for greater flexibility and different quotas from institution to institution.

The different jurisdictions also reserve quotas for local students—a practice that advantages students in areas that have a greater concentration of universities and top-tier institutions, such as Beijing and Shanghai. By some accounts, students from Anhui province, for instance, in 2012 had a 40 times lower chance of being admitted into Beijing universities than local students.

The total number of students sitting for the gaokao exam, as well as university admission rates, has surged over the years. Consider that in the mid-1980s fewer than two million students sat for the gaokao, and that the overall admissions rate was only 23 percent in 1990. In 2018, by contrast, close to 10 million students took the test with 81 percent of them gaining admission.

However, admission rates at top institutions like the C9 group of universities—China’s equivalent of the Ivy League—are minuscule at best. The Atlantic reported in 2013 that “China’s prestigious Peking University and Tsinghua University, both based in Beijing, will collectively take about 84 students out of every 10,000 Beijingers who took the gaokao … 14 students from every 10,000 who took the gaokao in nearby Tianjin, 10 out of every 10,000 test takers from Shanghai, and only about three per 10,000 candidates from Anhui … and a mere two from every 10,000 taking the test in Guangdong.”