China’s “SAT” way worse then ours
Slate has an interesting article on the gaokao , China’s version of the SAT. Its the sole criterion for university admission in China where 10 million Chinese high school students are competing for approx. 5.7 million college spots:
It is China’s SAT—if the SAT lasted two days, covered everything learned since kindergarten, and had the power to determine one’s entire professional trajectory.
Does this really sound like any fun?
Students become aware of the gaokao, the sole criterion for university admission, at an early age. Pressures and preparations begin accordingly. All schooling, especially middle- and high-school curricula, is oriented toward gaokao readiness. Students often joke that it takes 12 years to study for the test. Angel, a freshman studying at the China Foreign Affairs University, where I currently teach, remembers walking out after the first day of testing and hearing her best friend remark, “Well, there goes six years.”
And, to make matters even worse, in some cases you can’t even see your scores before you apply:
Some provinces, including Beijing, permit students to see their gaokao scores before they apply; others, like Shandong and Anhui, require them to indicate preferences before the results are released. Students are left to guess the best school and department they can get into, which often results in unhappy matches. Mike is about to complete his studies in diplomacy at CFAU. Had he seen his gaokao scores before applying, however, he would have known that he had qualified for his first choice: environmental protection at Peking U. In other cases, students overestimate their scores and are left with no option at the end of the summer but to study another year.
As someone who earlier this year had a lukewarm performance on the GRE’s and who blew off studying for the SATs (despite my parents shelling out good money for classes) my heart goes out to these poor students.
Holla at me