The National Higher Education Entrance Examination(mostly, the abbreviation was written as NCEE, National College Entrance Examination), or commonly known as Gaokao, is an academic examination held annually in China. This examination is a prerequisite for entrance into almost all higher education institutions at the undergraduate level. It is usually taken by students in their last year of high school, although there has been no age restriction since 2001.
In 2006, a record high of 9.5 million people applied for tertiary education entry in China. Of these, 8.8 million (93%) are scheduled to take the national entrance exam and 27,600 (0.28%) have been exempted from standardized exams (保送) due to exceptional or special talent. The rest (0.7 million) will take other standardized entrance exams, such as those designed for adult education students.
The overall mark received by the student is generally a weighted sum of their subject marks. The maximum possible mark varies wildly from year to year and also varies from province to province.
Students from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Macau Special Administrative Region remain in their respective educational system before the handover so students in these two places do not participate in the Gaokao as the universities there retain their own admission procedure for local students. In return, mainland China's universities have a separate procedure for the admission of those students.
Read more about National Higher Education Entrance Examination: History, Procedure
Famous quotes containing the words national, higher, education, entrance and/or examination:
“But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften the manners. It gives a delicate turn to the imagination, and a kind of polish to the mind in severer studies.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Reporters for tabloid newspapers beat a path to the park entrance each summer when the national convention of nudists is held, but the cult’s requirement that visitors disrobe is an obstacle to complete coverage of nudist news. Local residents interested in the nudist movement but as yet unwilling to affiliate make observations from rowboats in Great Egg Harbor River.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)