China's High Stakes "Gaokao" Test Under Scrutiny

Sophisto
Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:21:15 +0000

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.