One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud
bbc.com
bbc.com
How do these people live with themselves, especially the daughter of the CCP official who assumed the stolen identity? I’m sure financial criminals justify their behavior by telling themselves that in the end corporations suffer the cost of the theft, but in this case a single individual was forced to bear the brunt of this fraud for the rest of her life considering how important and life altering a good exam score is in China.
It boggles the mind that people can live with themselves and can carry on living with such guilt. Then again, maybe it’s my western sense of morality that tells me the perpetrator should feel guilt. Perhaps they don’t...
Those cheaters appear to have no conscience whatsoever about the whole affair.
I wouldn't say it's your western sense of morality but your personal values. Many westerners sleep very well at night and yet are guilty of the same behavior.
Chinese universities as far as I know don’t have things like institutionalized legacy admissions.
I’d like people to reconsider the view that western societies are somehow inherently purer or less corrupt. Often it takes different forms.
This can be seen in the way sanctions are imposed for companies using slave labor in Xinjiang but there is not nearly as much reflection on the vast amounts of prison labor in the US mostly of people unjustly given heavy sentences. In fact the number of people in American prisons rivals the number of people in Soviet gulags. Yet there is no shortage of sanctimony or moral rectitude.
Anything wrong with western society is an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise just system but anything wrong outside the west is a civilizational failing that can only be fixed by adopting some theoretical enlightenment values which the west itself struggles to practice without hypocrisy.
We can criticize others and ourselves without essentializing or casting ourselves as inherently moral.
That's a pretty huge difference. Letting someone donate money in exchange for admission smells bad, but if the donation is larger than the cost, they made more room for others than they occupied themselves. If a third party captures the "donation", that's just a roundabout form of theft/embezzlement.
George W. Bush was a longtime legacy at Yale, yes, but he performed about as well as Kerry did at Yale and Gore did at Harvard. With no family connections to Harvard he applied to HBS without telling his father, who had by then served as a one-term Texas congressman and UN ambassador, and was serving as the head of the Republican National Committee. To show how little "pull" the Bush name had despite all that, Bush was turned down by the University of Texas law school before getting in at HBS.
But the concept of granting admission based on such status, as opposed to extending special treatment to an admitted student, is very much muted.
There are ways of getting in to a university without passing the gaokao threshold that would ordinarily be required. But those generally involve receiving a point boost that the college has the official discretion to offer, or doing well on an alternative test -- someone scoring 303 out of 750 would obviously not pass a lower discretionary threshold either.
Note that when "officials in Shandong say new processes are now in place to make sure such incidents will not happen again", they are correct -- it's already possible to look up both your gaokao score (this girl's score wasn't falsified; rather, her identity was stolen) and the 分数线 that applied to you when you applied to a school. The problem would be instantly detected[1] by anyone who felt bitter about what happened -- and this is quite likely, since you have a strong idea of what your gaokao score will be before you actually take the test. (You have to, because you apply to colleges before you get your official result.)
[1] Well, detected with probably a one-year lag.
In the US, collages have more or less rigorous programs rather than simply letting people slide through.
I do not think your conclusion follows from your premise.
VIP students is a way to communicate across the university. Otherwise professors have no way of knowing who they need to give extra leniency to. I know collage professors at several schools and we really have nothing widespread like that.
Not to be a jerk, I just saw you make the same spelling mistake a couple times
* Minority race
* Very poor areas
* People with certain disability but not affecting learning capability
The hidden official VIP:
* Descents and relatives of people with power
From one study of three selective private research universities
African Americans: +230
Hispanics: +185
Recruited athletes: +200
Legacies (children of alumni): +160
Cheating may exist but in terms of valuing meritocracy China has it as deeply ingrained as the west.
An ancient Chinese source estimates that 20% to 30% participants of imperial exams are imposters.
Endless examples of high ranking officials pave way for their descendants to succeed as top performers. A renown prime minister invited the chief examiner to his library, where he had removed all reading materials except a copy of an essay his son would write for the upcoming exam. The chief examiner was left waiting forever, so he was forced to read the only reading material within reach. When he later read it again as part of national exam, he recognized it immediately and made the the son of the prime minister NO. 1. This only came out because the emperor did not want PM's family become too powerful, but merely demoted the son from NO. 1 to NO. 3.
Not unlike elite institutions in the West, publicly the imperial exam system was lauded but a system of "donation" co-existed to fill official posts. This is a legal way to buy one's way into officialdom. "Legacy" entry was also available, not unlike today's system in China or elsewhere. Human nature prevails everywhere.
Old history is one thing, but the whole country being run as a corporation for the past 70 years is another.
Hiring people to take a test for you is another popular way to cheat the system, and there is no single victim who can complain.
If we look at both systems (and not as individuals), the US as a whole makes an attempt to do what's right and the system attempts to correct bad behavior. The original founders tried to prevent any one person from usurping power through checks and balances. As Trump tries to upend the country, the Supreme Court restricts what he can do but also tries to ensure the presidency retains power against the legislative branch. Trump has very little power against the Supreme Court and his Supreme Court appointees have voted against him several times already.
Citizens in United States can take to the street to protest against change. Does it always work? Most of the time no. But occasionally, with George Floyd's case, some changes are happening. When individual citizens has their rights taken away, it is possible to sue the government. When this is taken to the Supreme Court and the citizen wins, change happens.
These things will not necessarily get us to a better place but the mechanism for the people to make the change is enshrined in the constitution. Fortunately, this mechanism does eventually guide us to the right place. So far.
As far as I can tell, this kind of corrective behavior does not work in countries like Russia, China and North Korea. It's citizens cannot demand change. What these countries do have is a level of efficiency that democracies will never match. I am envious of this. I am jealous of China's high speed rails and it's ability to erect large cities and hospitals in a matter of months and days.
No doubt United States is in a bad place right now. It has lost its leadership status in the world, it's citizens are sick and dying with a virus that the rest of the world has controlled, and citizens are demanding to not be murdered by their police. However, Trump will most likely be voted out in the fall. Congress is slowly passing laws for better police reform. Counties and states who do not agree with the President covid policies can work against the President's demands to better protect their citizens. Yes there will be problems. Some bad actors will get away with unethical and immoral behaviors. However, the system will attempt to correct the problem. This is why Western democracy is regarded higher than dictatorships in countries like Russia, China and North Korea. The system in United States will give its citizens a better chance to weather the storm than a country with dictatorship.
The Mandate of Heaven is what gives a ruler in China the right to rule. This is not an inherent and automatic right like the divine right of kings.
If a ruler is unable to deliver prosperity and justice it’s completely justified for the ruler to be overthrown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
Western democracy is really being torn at the seams with Trump and Brexit. Both are policies which any sane outside observer will conclude are extremely harmful in the long term. However because of brainwashing a large portion of the citizenry are okay with it anyway.
Large sections are manipulated via social media by forces both external and internal dipping society into chaos even in the midst of existential threats like covid.
This is like saying yes we invaded a country and unleashed mass death but we also protest against it and make poignant films about how our soldiers felt really bad doing it so it’s all okay and it makes us better than those who don’t. The point is to not do it.
As we speak Iranians are dying in droves in the middle of a pandemic made worse by cruel sanctions imposed by the very people claiming to be enlightened. Imposing sanctions in the middle of a pandemic is nothing short of a crime against humanity.
With China's new digital surveillance system, it will be pretty hard to overthrow any dictator. China's control on news and media will ensure loyalty from a large percentage of the population. People who were critical of China's initial Covid response were silenced. Some disappeared. I guarantee you many people of Wuhan did not think that there was prosperity and justice.
Western democracy is being tested but I think the United States constitution is holding up pretty well. Today's Supreme Court ruling was 7-2 against Trump, with both justices nominated by Trump voting against Trump. The Supreme Court is focused on being impartial, so the navigated a ruling that will only release Trump's tax returns after the election.
"We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need." - Justice Roberts
The Supreme Court, 9-0 affirmed that the President is not above the law. This ruling will be executed on up and down the government chain. Trump wants to build a wall but he can't. Trump wants to deport DACA immigrants and he can't. While Trump did accomplish a lot for Republicans, the most egregious actions were prevented. Ultimately, Trump's damage can be limited and contained.
I agree that the US does not know how to handle foreign interference through social media. Trump seems like he's allowing it to happen. I'm reserving judgement till the next president gets involved. I also agree that Iran sanctions from Trump is criminal.
Ultimately, no system is perfect. United states and Western democracies are designed to limit the damage, which in turn can limit upsides. Dictatorships are efficient but can easily run afoul. The hope is that we can all choose the system we prefer.
You probably have heard that propaganda piece so often that you think it's true.
A part of China is rich despite the dictatorship murdering 70 million of its people; miraculously, that democide set back the country only by twenty years. If one wants to blame anything for making people rich, its the effects of unfettered turbo capitalism as practiced after Deng.
Really, torn at the seams? Brexit is going fine and now with covid it might work out better in the longrun.
America likes strong leaders. Trump isn't creating a new divide he is navigating the existing fault lines.
More importantly:
China forcing birth control on Uighurs to suppress population: (source AP)
Are you aware of this? What is your,opinion on those events?
> China forcing birth control on Uighurs to suppress population: (source AP)
> Are you aware of this? What is your,opinion on those events?
It's the same thing they do to the Chinese, which frankly seems worse to me.
Millions of Uighurs are forced into camps. They force them to take pills so they cannot have kids. Then they mass migrate han chinese into the region. One day soon they can say the majority are han chinese.
Europe will start putting pressure on China when they realize building this direct road to London China is building is the reason for the suffering they will impose punishment. Meanwhile the US has started creating a different supplies chains excluding China. When grow slows what will happen in China? Will the people revolt? Going to be an interesting 10 years.
Forced sterilization applies to the Han too.
That's fine, we can be open to that perspective, but we should also try to be objective and accept that there are rough objective measures of 'corruption', upon some places are going to do better than others, and that arguments based on cultural relativism are usually not very strong.
Transparency international has at least one take on it [1]
Laws are enforced differently throughout the world. But it's not enforced in CCP controlled China for certain groups.
The American high incarcerations rate is an exception in the western world.
Legacy admissions simply do not exist in countries like France or Germany. Some elite engineering colleges in France have an exam based admission system very similar to the Chinese one but identity theft on this scale has never occurred.
As far as I'm aware, it's an American trope, not a « Western » one. But it makes sense that kind of practice would occur in the US where universities were founded by communities to educate their own people, rather than as extensions of the State.
The average westerner walks around in clothing made by incredibly desperate people living in poverty who work long hours in horrible conditions.
Not just hers, her entire family. They worked together to help her do her best, including her brother dropping school. How much that conversation have gone when the results came back that she failed.
Unbelievable. Apparently some people have been punished, but what sort of punishment can make up for the awful position this family has been in for 15 years?
The article describes national outrage at this story of injustice, your implication is that a larger “eastern” sense of morality has allowed this to happen, rather than the corrupt individuals named.
Also what a lot of people don't seem to think about is that said insurance scheme premiums aren't generally paid for from the company's profits, but rather from increasing customer fees enough to cover it.
Fraudsters aren't actually taking money from the pockets of the company, but rather from the company's other customers.
In the less developed areas of China the so called "Cheng Guan Wu Ju Tou" (The five masters of the town, usually includes the party secretary, the town mayor, vice mayors and maybe a couple of other important officials e.g. the head of the finance bureau) holds a lot of power over the general populace. Their family members also hold other important positions and they have been living in the same areas for maybe centuries.
Historically the central government had to rely on these local masters but nowadays it's getting the upper hand and a lot of these things are being reported publicly. It's kind of difficult to do the same thing (as in the BBC report) nowadays as electronic records are everywhere.
Like some Chinese criminals with money hiring body doubles to serve their prison term for them.
Is it nuts to anyone else that the more powerful, socially connected person stole the poorer but better scoring person's identity for not only school, but continued to be her professionally for years after?
I was reading and wondering what good this did if someone else got the degree, and was flabbergasted to see that the imposter just decided to take over the identity in perpetuity. I would assume in the west that usually only happens when the imposter's original identity is problematic (a criminal, poor and trying to hob-nob with elites, etc). In this case we have the child of an obviously well connected (and I assume well-off) official willing to take over someone else's identity.
For Chinese professionals, your school network -- the alumni and peers -- is a large influence in finding a job after graduation and helping get promoted.
Or are you talking about something else?
(a) look the other way because you like rigging the system, or
(b) fire them and call the FBI.
I think (b) is the clear answer. Even if you want the children of the rich and powerful in your university, you want to know who they are, you want to collect any money that comes with it into the university’s coffers, and you do not want your employees enriching themselves at your university’s expense.
Add in the fact that most universities’ presidents are unlikely to be entirely amoral, and I think it’s pretty hard to conclude that this particular incident indicates corruption at the top levels.
(Sure, one might argue that the fact that athletic recruiting requests are considered at all for admissions is a problem, but the case in question wasn’t really about this.)
> In a deposition, Rakesh Khurana, dean of the college, said a legacy preference can foster another kind of diversity: placing people with deep Harvard experience alongside those without it.
They refer to nepotism as "deep Harvard experience", that's the only difference.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy-admissions-o...
The problem then, as I see it, is not legacy consideration helping people get admitted, but legacy considerations overriding the other criteria. If legacy considerations where only a 15-20% in applicant suitability, I think most people wouldn't be that upset about it. When it leads to wholly and obviously unsuitable people going, that's probably when the legacy system has gone out of control.
That is, if you scored this in a rubric, some kid whose parents went to Harvard would score 20 and I would score 0. That is wrong on a fundamental level. It's a bit like anti-affirmative action.
I am fine with this system as it stands. However, it is wildly inconsistent with the pearl-clutching top comment (I know, not you) spewing stuff about the "Western sense of morality".
Is it? Why?
I think it depends on the amount of government funding they get. For a completely private university, is it wrong? I think it's wrong for a university that gets a majority of its funding from the state to act this way, but for universities that have giant billion dollar endowments? Sure, let them manage at least some of the admissions somewhat as they would as if private.
> It's a bit like anti-affirmative action.
It's exactly like affirmative action, except to benefit the university. I think being able to apply this on some small percentage of the students, maybe five percent, is acceptable.
It's going to happen, why not account for it and control it rather than make everyone involved act like it isn't happening and then we just have a vague sense that it happens but little info and control over it?
A better example of nepotism in college admissions has occurred in the past where Governors or other politicians had the ability to give scholarships at major universities in their state, and they customarily gave these to their own children or those of friends. For that matter many school overtly give benefits to their faculty and staff such as free tuition for immediate family members. Perhaps even an easier chance at admission for some.
Regardless, the reason colleges actually do legacy admissions both seems obvious and isn’t something they’re likely to say. It makes Alumni happy, and keeping Alumni happy is how you get those fat $donations$.
I came to the USA to have the future I couldn't have back there, and I call bullshit on your comparison. I didn't go to an ivy league school, I went to a public school, and today I make hiring decisions over engineering candidates with Ivy League school backgrounds. That type of social mobility is a fantasy in South America and the other countries you are trying to compare with the USA.
? I don't really think this is the mechanism.
When major donors, who are alumni and part of the institution, ask for a favour to have a slot for their kid ... to me that may seem 'unfair' but it's also above bar if the school wants to do that and I have no problem with it so long as it doesn't take up a huge share of any particular intake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...
Polo, sailing, rowing, football, basketball, baseball... You name it; for a few hundred thousand you can have fake sports credentials fabricated -- complete with photoshopped team memberships -- and get yourself pencil-whipped into UoT, Yale, UCLA, USD, Georgetown, etc.
It says a lot about the general attitude of Chinese people.
(I'm chinese, btw)
I'm also Chinese.
It's seen in other ways like lack of queuing, littering, and the general corruption throughout all levels of bureaucracy.
The attitude is far less pervasive in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, or other countries with significant Chinese populations.
Can't comment too much on corruption as I don't have much experience there, but I have noticed things like lining up and littering get better as the standard of living has improved over the years.
But beyond that I'm not sure it has much to do with society as a whole.
In China they have a saying: 能骗就骗.
If you can cheat, cheat.
Can cheat. Do cheat.
I made a general observation about corruption and culture, other people decided to respond to it in a bad way.
If this type of comment isn't allowed on HN it's a form of censorship. Basically I can't say anything negative about a culture or a country because it's classified as flame bait.
This is similar to the way the CCP practices censorship in China. People in my country basically can't say anything negative about it. Thank you for perpetuating that sentiment here on HN.
You can call moderation 'censorship'—people mostly just mean by it that they don't like something. I don't see the similarity to the communist party myself, but have been accused of communism so often by now—invariably after doing a bit of standard moderation that somebody disliked—that it has all come to seem more internet-silly than anything anybody actually believes.
The context is fraud in China. The context involves multiple people from all walks of life and society in China contributing to the fraud. A stark contrast to how corruption occurs in the states. I don't think it's obvious flamebait at all. The definition of what is flamebait itself is rather vague..
A good way to definitively define flamebait is to call it any comment which starts a flamewar.
This means a definitive classification of flamebait can only be crystallized after the posting of the comment in question and observing the resulting aftermath...
In this case I see no flamewar, so I don't believe my comment constitutes as such.
There are good reasons why the site guidelines say "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." and "Eschew flamebait." It's not as if we sat down and dreamt them up one day. They come from many years of experience and directly address how internet forums function, and commenters here need to follow them.
Perhaps you don't feel like this matters, but I can tell you for a fact that people have been hounded off this site by comments of this nature (e.g. China-related slurs), including extremely ugly personal attacks. I don't want to have anything to do with a site where that happens, and I don't believe that the vast majority of this community would either. None of us wants that community. But we can easily end up with it anyway, if we're not careful, because that's how group dynamics work.
Part of the problem here is that the forum feels like an intimate conversation, and in intimate conversation there is more latitude for talking in a grand and speculative way about this stuff, especially if you have high trust from previous interactions. But when you post to HN what you're actually doing is broadcasting to millions of people. Public broadcasting has to have different standards. Imagine what would result if a million people heard the things that you (or I, or any of us) said to your friends, without any mitigating context.
I don't know what you mean by political expediency but it doesn't sound like something the moderation job is replete with.
In reality, for this specific topic, the canyon is not so wide as you believe and I don't think you have the relevant cultural context to make such a judgement call on how wide it is. It's a century old question... how much freedom of speech and how much censorship and at what cost?
In this case you chose to censor something that could potentially be flame bait (but wasn't) at the cost of preventing any discussion about a very real and general truth about China.
I mean, tbh, these are rather vague guidelines. You could say my comments are "thoughtful and substantive." I made an observation that the corruption in the article had many responsible parties and people from all walks of life participating in it, more than what would normally happen in the states. The fact that so many people participated does say something about the culture in general.
As for "eschew flamebait"... how much flame did this post cause? There's definitely a bit a flame, but I would say overall a flamewar didn't happen. So basically you're wrong. You use your "experience" to justify the warning but I would say your experience is wrong for this case... most of the sub threads aren't things that I would classify as flame.
I get where you come from though. It's hard to see from a distance whether a comment will cause a forrest fire.
Maybe put out the forest fire if you see one starting, but don't ban the use of matches all together.
I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this, based on years of experience and god knows how many thousands of cases of dealing with this. The issue is the expected value of the subthread: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
If you're going to comment on a topic this inflammatory, you need to include way more flame retardant in your comment. Two helpful ways to do that are (1) be clear and explicit about your intent, and (2) speak about your own personal experience.
You didn't contain anything. You didn't even respond to the subthread where people were were actually starting fires. You just threw a warning at me after most of the conversation already played out. Not only did a fire not happen, you showed up after most people left the premises.
>I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this,
Go ahead and pull rank man. You can even ban me if you wanted to, it's your right. I'm not trying to say anything to the contrary. The servers are based in the states, but they're private property so you are 100% in your rights to do whatever you want.
>The issue is the expected value of the subthread
No offense, but your "years of experience" or "expected value" is equivalent to your "biased opinion" because, as other people in this thread and I have shown, we had another "biased opinion" on what that probability distribution for the expected value looked like. To me it doesn't look like flame bait and it looks like their's plenty of flame retardant as well. Either way, none of these predictions or opinions really matter in the face of what actually occurred.
The expected value of a post is a moving target that eventually coalesces into the actual demonstrated value of the post.
The actual value of this post demonstrates that no flamewar occurred. So you were wrong while other people and I were right.
Whatever... if you want me to add more "flame retardant" next time I'll add it. It doesn't change the fact that for this thread you showed up onsite with a firehose to put out a fire that never occurred.
Also reminds me of the story from India like 1 or 2 years ago where a test had faulty answers and people thought they didn't get into university because of that
Which subject goes in each of those categories depends on the major you're applying for, so you have to decide what you'll want to study in university at age ~17 (or prior to that, really, when you're 15 in High School so you can focus your studies on the harder questions). For instance, if you want to go to Med School (which is an undergrad course in Brazil), you need to know all things Biology, from Nemathelminthes to the Krebs Cycle. Conversely, if you want to go Law School (also undergrad) or major in History, you'll need to know everything that happened between Plato and Gorbachev including really in-depth stuff on Brazilian history. The problem is, all of the High School classes are the same regardless of your intended exam – you have to learn all of the above for school along with everyone else.
And you get to take the same exam for each university you apply to, meaning you basically spend a year taking exams at various dates for all the good universities. Each major has X number of spots available to candidates, to the top X scores get in. Your extracurriculars, who you are as a person, anything on your resume is irrelevant. All that matters is your score.
Want to switch majors? Gotta drop out, take the exam again and restart your university life.
The SAT by comparison is an absolute joke of an exam
Damn.
Sounds absolutely brutal. That said, I was caught with the quoted paragraph. Why should your extracurricular hobbies or "you as a person" matter? As far as I see, all that should be considered in university admissions is indeed your test scores.
They certainly do at elite US schools. The logic is that there's no shortage of students who could handle the academic work but Harvard or even MIT aren't looking just to admit the students who did best on an exam.
Added: The way it at least used to be done (and I assume this still applies at least somewhat) was that quantitative academic scores are used to set something of a floor but, beyond that, they were just one of the factors that went into admissions decisions. (With weights and other considerations doubtless varying by school.)
They become very interested in questions like "does this person have volunteer experience that might have exposed them to a worldview larger than themselves?", "do they have a sport or hobby they enjoy which might provide them a boon in mental health?", "have they done anything which would require practical application of skills or collaboration beyond raw book learning?"
The same kind of thing comes up in job interviews all the time. As a hiring manager, I'm of course most interested in whether the candidate can perform the hard requirements of the job as described. But I'd also like signals about whether you're at risk for burnout, whether you might have empathy for differing points of view, or whether you can think on your feet in non-ideal scenarios or whether you'll crumble if a plan changes or a compromise must be found.
People are complex, and well-roundedness is a worthwhile goal on its own for a complex world. There are relatively few scenarios outside of standardized testing where raw academic or technical ability is the exclusive measure of a person.
I'm not familiar with an academic system like this so I can't really comment if it's giving good outcomes vs. purely academic selection. My country is small enough to have a single top tier university and multiple second level institutions, so I'm ingrained with the idea you should choose the best academic candidates from a limited applicant pool.
College itself is where you get a larger worldview. Requiring people have it already seems like a great way to exclude people trapped by family and financial constraints.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_Cuomo [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Savage [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Watson [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reese_Witherspoon [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Woods
That said, you might be surprised at the number of people who even go to a school like MIT and end up in journalism or something else that isn't obviously related to what you associate the school with.
You see no value to taking a music theory class with a platinum artist in your discussions on song structure? Or maybe the rock star wants to expand his horizons a bit and is also in your Ethics class discussing the effect of Napster on his ability to afford tuition. Or maybe he sits next to you in Econ and wants to use his experience in the music biz as the basis for your group project. etc, etc...
Forget the exam nerds, I'll take the real players every time. YMMV
The "real players" could also visit as guest lecturers on your music theory class, assuming they have good enough merits on the subject.
Each university publishes the grades they will accept at a minimum for each major so you essentially choose your major at 17, or really 15 as mentioned above, because you need certain subjects with an “A” result to enroll at the university.
At uni itself, almost all classes are mandatory for a given major with only one or two chances to take an elective. Failing a class at any point usually means either dropping out completely or being moved to a less prestigious major (e.g. “general science” instead of a CS degree).
It’s definitely stressful.
Over the last generation there has been massive grade inflation back when I left school getting 3A's where very rare
My comment on grading is also pretty objective, imo. Your AP score is 1-5. And the curve is crazy; when I took AP Physics C E&M I would have gotten a 5 whether I scored 60% or 100%. When reported, though, nobody will know what percentage of the points you scored. OTOH gaokao scores are reported in full.
First, they are offered once a year. Didn't do as well as you hope? Try again next year.
Second, the material is significantly harder. Take math as an example. The exam questions are a lot closer to AMC/AIME than to SAT. In fact, suppose language is not a problem, many Chinese middle schooler would do pretty well on SAT's math section. Also you are not allowed any calculator.
Finally, for the vast majority of students, the test score is literally the only factor deciding whether you get into college. Basically, you will provide an ordered list of preferences to colleges and majors, and the student with top score's request would be satisfied first, then the second, the third, etc.
One 'neat' tweak that the Indians take is the publication of the scores. You find out how you did because your name and score are printed in the newspaper, along with everyone else's.
So all the gossipy aunties and your folk's friends know your score and you know the scores of everyone else in school.
The social pressure to do well is insane. Your score reflects on your family, not just you.
It got the "What did you get?" conversations out of the way pretty quickly!
For the most prestigious University majors, this results in two sets of students: Those that had good enough grades to get in on their first try, straight out of school - or those that simply have to wait X number of years, until they've re-taken enough classes, gained enough age points, and what not.
One roomie of me during college had spent like 5 years doing all that, before finally getting accepted to medical studies. It's insane.
But still, with all that, I really feel bad for the students in China / India / Singapore / etc. where your future pretty much rests on one exam, and that's that.
At least here in the west, especially richer northern counties, people can "screw around" for years trying to find their way, without it hurting them too much - financially, or professionally.
Calculators shouldn’t be allowed on any mathematics examination. With limited exceptions, high-school mathematics and beyond is not really about arithmetic or numerical solutions, but about demonstrating understanding, which you don’t need a calculator for.
Questions on exams that use numerics also put people with dyscalculia at a disadvantage even if they have great ability at differential and integral calculus and other symbolic operations.
But mainly because it’s the best way to sneak-in crib notes past the exam invigilators. Especially in the US where everyone uses TI graphical calculators (yay for regulatory capture).
Here is what I know back then as a student who took GaoKao in the 90s:
1. GaoKao also has provincial variants.
For example, back in the year when I took GaoKao, my city used a form called "3+1", which means 3 primary (Chinese, Math and English) plus 1 auxiliary. You can choose the auxiliary at the end of 11th grade, and the choices are Politics, History, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, etc. Other provinces used different forms but the majority were and still are on "3+2", so instead of one auxiliary they have to prepare for two.
From what I recalled, a few years after some provinces switched to 3+X (X depends on your choice). You still only get 1 exam for the X though.
2. Different universities have different entry scores for different provinces.
For example, I got a score of 420/600 I think? The university I went to actually charged different entry scores for different provinces. It makes sense in one way, as different provinces have different forms of GaoKao, but overall it's very unfair to students from less developed areas. I won't expand the reasoning from here but it has been a huge debate since decades ago.
Not a great situation but I can assure you no lives are at risk.
Yeah that seems like the risk for screwing someone over is not so low - same outcome as if you hadn't committed this atrocity.
China's system is probably the fairer one compared to US. I don't know the system at Europe India, or any other nations ranked high in intellectual competitiveness. Would be interested in learning the details.
Additionally, conventional higher education is mostly obsolete. Technically, one absolutely can access the same quality education outside of a typical 4 year university. That is a sea-level change compared to that in 10-20 years ago.
Prominent institutions today primarily serve as social selection process to find the compatible individuals and assimilate them into the elite class.
My observations identify that as obvious in US. China also have similar setup in Tsinghua and Beijing university. Especially since Hu Jintao's presidency, while the majority of the standing committee of CCP Politburo are from these 2 institutions. And the culture aura attached to them is also purposefully cultivated by CCP and the government.
Now, what is the proper mechanism to prevent the small fraction of elite institutions from inbreeding, and make sure a diverse and representative student body be admitted into these institutions. For example, it was a huge problem in China that the students into the better higher education institutions have <10% from non-urban areas, while the total population has 57% in non urban areas. This number used to be >20%.
This type of inequality is the most problematic.
And how could you possibly repay the poor woman and her family for this?
You're unlikely to find any accurate measure of that, since she likely has people propping her up well into her adult life.
It's not already criminalised? I would expect fraud to be illegal.
Bad design right there.
Obviously these doesn't help when some one takes your identity and enrolls on your behalf.
Even if there is rejection letter. It probably wouldn't make a difference to the subject of this article. A fake rejection can be easily fabricated (especially if the recipient doesn't know what a real one should look like.)
Also, the subject knows his/her score. The university has limited discretion to deny admission of people above the score threshold. At the end, it all comes down to low social economic status and corrupted officials working against the subject.
Either there haven't been many cases or not many have been revealed. But why only until 2009?
> Local authorities have launched an investigation into Chen Chunxiu's case and 46 people have been punished.
That's a lot of people necessary to steal an identity!
Modern China was built off the backs of Cheap Manual laborers
China today seems to put bright people into improving manufacturing technology. There are PhD theses from China on electrolytic capacitor free switching power supply designs for LED lightbulbs. US academia would frown on something that practical.
But that's not really unique to China. One can go to the more expensive cities in the western world, and take a look at how the working classes are just surviving. Zero upward mobility, once you're trapped in those jobs - from a professional point of view.
I've had the great displeasure of working minimum wage dead-end jobs, in a major city, and it was the most stressing thing of my life. Poor pay, ever-increasing rents and general living costs, zero job security, close to no prospects of owning your own apartment or home.
You don't really feel like a permanent resident. Just a transient passing through, and when the jig us up, you're out.