<p>Probably about 5% of all college applicants do this, or even a lot less. Even so, who spends 16 hours a day studying for them?</p>
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<p>Actually, the US government relocates a ton of people all the time for development, and local governments have zoning laws. The government also puts up qualifications for jobs, and limits people under 18 from participating in government. </p>
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<p>“All jobs in China are public…”</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but this is one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever heard. Sorry, but the year isn’t 1960 anymore. Tens of millions of Chinese work in private business that have one goal - for you to buy things from them. Then there are hundreds of millions of Chinese who work in manufacturing jobs for private business (including American ones).</p>
<p>As far as I know, there isn’t a significant number of occurrences where the Chinese government has forced someone to work in a profession.</p>
<p>^ Please note the qualifier on my statement. I gladly stand corrected; all of my relatives did work in public service, and my uncle was just relocated to Tibet for 3 years. If that doesn’t happen to most people, all the better.</p>
<p>Both my parents went through this. I know people who couldn’t make it to their dream universities because they were 0.5 points below the cutoff. </p>
<p>I don’t think this is comparable to the SAT in terms of rigor. People study for hours during the last three years of high school for the Gao Kao. It’s not an extra prep thing people do on the side. Think about how many hours hs seniors in North America spend in class, on sports teams, doing volunteer, doing ECs. Well imagine that ALL dedicated to doing practice questions for the Gao Kao. It’s a shame that the education system isn’t promoting extra-curriculars, leadership, sports, and work experience AT ALL. </p>
<p>“About three in five students make the cut.” - This is deceiving as well. It’s not a pass/fail test. Schools like Beida or Qinghua (two top schools there) basically have a really high cutoff, while rural schools are more lax. Most of the people probably won’t be able to get in the school they want. </p>
<p>And there is shame (self-imposed or otherwise) for failing to achieve the highest level. Here, if you get rejected from Harvard, we say, “Ah, well, hardly anybody gets into Harvard anyway.” (If we are well-adjusted, that is.) Devoting your entire life to a solitary goal that you have no guarantee of achieving is a sign of sickness, not a work ethic to be admired.</p>
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<li><p>It’s hard to devote an entire life to get into a certain college… unless said life ends right after admission.</p></li>
<li><p>Plenty of people spend their lives work toward a single goal. Professional athletes strive to reach the pinnacle of their sports. Environmentalists try to save the rain forest/oceans/north pole. Politicians try to get become prime minister/president. Scientists want to try an win a nobel prize. Doctors might want to spend their lives looking for a cure to cancer. There’s no point in having a goal if you’re guaranteed success. I really don’t see why this is a sickness.</p></li>
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<p>Of course I don’t mean that success must be truly guaranteed. I only mean…and these are my own values speaking, as we’re just sharing opinions here…that a society that pressures a large portion of its population to strive relentlessly for something that only a few will achieve is not very good for the soul. If you feel differently, fine.</p>
<p>I see a parallel, for example, with high school football in some parts of Texas. Kids sacrifice their studies, their bodies, their normal social progress, in a near-futile bid to become one of the tiny number of kids who gets an athletic scholarship, or the even tinier number who becomes a professional. An equally sick perversion of childhood, if you ask me.</p>
<p>Of course it’s not particularly healthy for the soul, but I’d say that a society that is geared toward success in life is healthier than society that prefers idle mediocrity. Of course we’d like to strike a balance, but I’d say it’s better to err on the side of too much “success” than too much apathy.</p>
<p>Besides, in a market economy everything is a competition… and not everybody can be a winner. </p>
<p>Why? Because they’re not as difficult overall? That’s not important. It’s the distribution of scores that matters. If 20% of the people taking the ACT got a 36, it would be a joke, but that’s not the case.</p>
<p>The college entrance tests used in China are routinely reprinted in Taiwan, and I bought Taiwan reprints of some of the tests from around the turn of the most recent century when I last lived in Taiwan. The tests used in Japan are also routinely translated into Chinese and republished in Taiwan, and I have some of those reprints too. The tests are plenty difficult; I’d rate them as being like taking a battery of AP-level or harder SAT Subject Test tests all in just a two-day span. Of course not everyone who gets into college aces all the item content on these tests, just as very few United States students ace the item content on the SAT Reasoning Test. </p>
<p>But in general students have to step up more and reach a higher level in their high school learning, because this is the primary channel for entrance to the best colleges in China, and graduation from the worse colleges in China is still likely to leave a young person unemployed. </p>
<p>So there is considerable incentive to study to gain entrance into the better rather than into the worse universities. That also makes study abroad as a graduate student much more likely (all the top graduate programs in the United States know which undergraduate universities in China are the best), so students who want to get out of China’s economy also have considerable incentive to perform well on the entrance exams.</p>
<p>A very close friend of mine is from China, I met him in graduate school, (math). He went to a good University in China and then was able to come here for graduate school. I asked him how he could do something so adventurous, English was his second language, he didn’t know anyone here. He said that no matter how spartan his living conditions, not matter how hard school was, it was so much better than what he had to go back to. The graduate school stipend was like a fortune to him. 25 years later he still considers the opportunity to come to this country the defining moment of his life, the one that made the difference the good life he has here and the not so good one he would have had in China.</p>
<p>In graduate school the Asian students worked the hardest, the American students not so much. If we Americans didn’t succeed we had other choices. If they didn’t succeed they had nothing. American students have it easy by comparison.</p>
<p>My mom says that the test is comprehensive–that it covers everything from kindergarten to high school. Oh gosh, I would fail that test. You can’t cram for that kind of test. I’m so lucky I don’t have to.</p>
<p>I just read another article about the gao kao, and it got me wondering: Are there any colleges in the U.S. that base admissions solely (or pretty much so) on standardized test scores? Of the hundreds of colleges, I would think there’s one, somewhere, that looks at your SAT score, compares it to an established cutoff, and makes their decision on the spot. Or, more likely, ranks all applicant’s scores and offers admission to the top X%.</p>
<p>The language is a bit ambigous. It says colleges that use specific scores as a cut-off (could be a minimum requirement or could be the only factor in admission) are “at odds” with the NACAC’s report advising colleges “not use minimum test scores as the sole criterion for admission, advising or for the awarding of financial aid.” So that implies that some colleges admit just on test scores alone. But earlier it implied that colleges have cut-off scores for being considered (passing the “threshold”). So interpret this as you will.</p>
<p>I assume you’re referring to “ping le!” which is sort of “fight with your all”, though I think of it as a cross between “cram”, “go for it”, “fight”, “do everything you can” and… well, English lacks the vocabulary.</p>
<p>More telling is the couplet above the blackboard. I can’t read it clearly, but I can guess what it says: “suffer for a while, prosper (be fortunate) for a lifetime”.</p>
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