More Shanghai universities say 'no' to the gaokao

The gaokao, currently a right of passage for all Chinese high school students that makes the United State's SATs look like a cake walk, might soon become a thing of the past as more of China’s top universities choose to offer their own entrance exams months before the national one.

Top Shanghai universities including Fudan, Jiaotong and Tongji, joined Tsinghua University and the famous Beida as well as 24 other schools across the nation, opting to use their own tests and interviews to help them independently select 5 percent of their incoming students rather than just using the results of the national exam.

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With these current university additions, now 80 schools offer a small percentage of their students an alternative test to the gaokao.

This is a major shift away from complete reliance on the national university exam that dominates the lives of Chinese high schoolers.

“It's an important step in the reform of China's college entrance exam system,” said Lao Kaisheng, an expert on education policy at Capital Normal University, to Xinhua reporters.

"This helps lighten the students' load," continued Lao.

Regardless whether students opt to take the school specific test, it doesn’t get them out of taking the nationally mandated three-day gaokao in June, which has for decades been the only test for Chinese high schoolers wanting to go on to Chinese universities.

The system is widely criticized, according to Xinhua, and has been looking to reform in recent years.

Currently during the three-day gaokao, over 9.57 million students compete for approximately 6.57 million places at China's universities, from elite schools to vocational colleges.

In China’s increasingly competitive job market, the gaokao is one of the few clear roads for China’s bright student from central and western provinces to make it to the cosmopolitan cities of China's east coast. Read: Shanghai.

But, with so much riding on one exam, even in a 2010 10-year education reform and development plan, Chinese education ministry officials acknowledged the unfairness of "a single examination that defines a student's destiny," reports The Chronicle.

Although the new university testing system is a step in the right direction, some worry that even the new system will be unfair to students -- just in different ways. 

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Peking University started admitting up to three percent of its students on principal recommendations in the fall of 2010, but critics say it doesn’t guarantee diversity, and that principals would most likely recommend students who scored well on the exams anyway.

An online poll by Sohu news, also reported on by The Chronicle, found that 79 percent of respondents were against this method and similar university reforms due to fear of corruption, and only 10 percent in favor.