emberjed

That actually doesn't sound too hard, no matter the level of philosophical thinking the graders expect. 1,000 characters actually seems pretty short - they'd better make the most of it.

TskDbx

@emberjed
Except for the fact that Chinese characters are much more semantically dense than characters in languages with alphabetic writing systems. A 1000 character text in Chinese could very easily be more than twice the length of a 1000 character English text.

Yelmarine

1000 Chinese characters roughly equal to 500 words in English, if anyone is interested. But students are given over 1hr to work on this instead of 25min in SAT, so more polished words and deeper thoughts are expected. Personally I like neither sat essays or gaokao ones, though. They don't show true ability of a student.

And gaokao isn't all that scaring as you think. With all the teachers and classmates working really hard together, senior year will pass quickly. I actually think US's college application is more competitive and stressing, with all those over achievers competing you and colleges so random in admission. Gaokao is only about scores, which is TOTALLY under your own control.

Sophisto

I bet you don't know how essays are marked in China lol That's something completely different from the SAT essay marking system I guess.
And actually working really hard can't secure a place in top unis. One of my middle school classmates worked 15hrs/day in her final year of high school and failed to go to top-tier unis. Working hard doesn't necessarily give you a good results in gaokao and thus it's much more competitive and stressful than the US application though this is caused by the insanity of the whole system.
I did know a lot of very talented students who didn't get into Peking U but might easily get accepted by Princeton or Harvard if they could have prepared for SAT. They could be counted as genius in specific fields but did poorly in something like Chinese literature, and unfortunately Chinese literature etc. is the ones that could not be avoided in gaokao lol
And yeah this is the major reason why it's more competitive and stressful, no one could choose to only major and be tested in what they are good at. It is not a test about general writing, logical etc. Everyone is required to take the standardized SUBJECT-CORRELATED exams.

ChadVene

From what I hear and have seen, it's unbelievably stressful both psychologically and physically. And sadly, it's a huge waste of time in terms of finding "talent" since the highest scorers are great at memorizing but naught else.

Just imagine taking a more comprehensive and harder version of the SAT, but instead of your GPA, ECs, and recs, the score you receive on your SATs determines what school you will attend, and due to the sheer number of applicants/students/graduates, that might very well define the rest of your life. Oh, and you only have one shot at taking the test.

Nearly every academic and extracurricular achievement that you ever had means diddily-squat compared to one test. And even one point lower means you'll be ranked tens of thousands of places below others. Pressure, anyone?

Apollo6

If it is so hard to get into Chinese universities, why are there so many foreign students studying in Chinese high schools? At Beijing High School #80 where my son is studying Chinese, there are hundreds of foreign students planning to stay in China for university studies. Many are Korean but there are students from other countries as well. Why?

ChadVene

^ Difference of circumstances. You could also say there's so many foreign students studying in American high schools, and trying to apply to American universities.

If you are staying in China indefinitely, you don't have much choice but to apply to their schools as well.

Sophisto

> Apollo6
It is a completely different story for students with a non-China passport. Foreign students in China are tested on different standard and there is no competition at all, so they could easily get into top-tier Chinese unis without preparing much for the exams.
If they were required to sit Gaokao I guess almost none of them could get accepted by any single 3rd-tier uni in China.

zhuziyan

Beijing students are easier to get in top schools. But for students not in big cities, the situation is different. I don't think US students can imagine pressure that Chinese students are under.

I can promise Gaokao is 10 times harder than SAT.

BigHall

The article estimates the acceptance rate at Peking University at 0.5%, less than a tenth of Harvard's.

and as a chinese, i have witnessed too many unfairness.

sonic34

it has something to do with the education system. and its much easier to get admitted by simply taking one SAT

Sausagie

As a Chinese student, I know how hard and cruel gaokao is. University admission officers are only interested in the test scores, they don't require EC, GPA, interviews, etc. And unlike SAT, gaokao happens only once a year and students can only apply to 3 schools. They who fail must repeat their senior years (like PG) and wait for the next time.