gaokao essay

The Test that Determines your Life:

The Chinese Gaokao

Zach A. Thompson

Class 711

April 10, 2015

You are at the Maotachang High School in China, studying for the gaokao test.  Because every college in China looks solely at gaokao scores when choosing students, you study all day, and much of the night.  Millions of Chinese students all over the country are doing just the same, so they can go to the top universities.  Rich kids can hire private tutors and pay their way in, but poor kids like you have to visit ‘cram schools’ like Maotachang.  The Upfront magazine article “China’s Cram Schools,” discusses the topic of the gaokao test.  This way of testing, putting every bit of pressure to get into a good college, is not a good system for students.  The extreme pressure of China’s gaokao test is unfair, especially for kids in poverty.

The gaokao system is unfair because if you don’t do well on the test, there is no hope of getting into a top university.  In the Upfront article, it says, “Given every June over several days, the test is the only thing that matters for admission to Chinese universities” (Larmer, page 13).  This end-of-the-year test is what the colleges look at, and if you don’t do well enough, you can’t do anything about it.  The gaokao test, in a way, represents what your life will be like after high school.  If you do well, you could be a wealthy scientist or engineer working in a large city.  But if you fail, you will probably be someone in poverty working on a rural farm, construction site, or factory, making very little money.  Therefore, this type of testing means there is extreme stress leading up to the tests.  The article says that “Yang Wei, then a senior at Maotachang, had spent the previous three years, weekends included, stumbling to his first class at 6:20 in the morning and returning to his room only after the end of his last class at 10:50 at night” (Larmer, page 13).  Yang Wei was at the Maotachang high school, where he did nothing but study for the upcoming gaokao test, every day, sixteen hours per day.  He did this for three years, just to study for one test.  This puts incredible stress on students trying to get the top score on the test.

This system is also unfair for poor kids, because they at a disadvantage.  In the article, it states, “Rural students are at a severe disadvantage.  Villages like Yuejin, where Yang is from, have poor schools and few well-trained teachers” (Larmer, page 14).  Poor rural villages don’t have many good teachers or schools, so students can’t learn what they need to know to do well on the gaokao test.  And that means the next generation will be the same.  Furthermore, the article states, “Wealthy urban families can hire private tutors, pay for test-prep courses, or bribe their way into the best city schools” (Larmer, page 14).  In the city, rich people have more money and resources, more ways to score high on the gaokao, while the poor struggle to score well, and often still don’t.  In this system, the rich people stay rich, and the poor people stay poor.

On the other hand, the gaokao test can be what gets a poor rural family out of poverty, the one ray of hope for success.  The Upfront article talks about the story of Xu Peng, who grew up in poverty but made it out by scoring high on the gaokao.  The article says, “He grew up as one of China’s 60 million ‘left behind’ children, raised by his grandparents while his parents worked as migrant fruit sellers in the distant city of Wuxi.  Xu spun out of control in middle school, sneaking out with his friends, becoming obsessed with video games.” (Larmer, page 15). Xu started out life in poverty, and in middle school, became a terrible student, and didn’t get accepted to a good high school.  However, he realized he had to change somehow, so he went to school at Maotachang, and studied during every spare minute for the gaokao.  As the article says, “The extra push might have helped: Xu scored 643 out of a possible (but never achieved) 750.  That gaokao score enabled him to get into Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s most prestigious schools” (Larmer, page 15).  No matter how bad your school grades are, getting a good grade on the gaokao test can change the life of a poor student.  But this is just one success story, and does not represent the majority of kids.  The unfairness of the test and the lack of resources mean that most poor kids stay that way.  For example, the article describes Cao, who started out life in poverty just like Xu and Yang Wei.  But he, just like the majority of poor kids, did poorly on the gaokao and “he would end up on a construction site, just like his father” (Larmer, page 15).  The gaokao is not the one way out of poverty for most poor kids.  It is a false hope that people try to believe in.

Overall, China’s college application system and its gaokao test are an unfair system that puts the poor kids at a disadvantage, and keeps them poor.  The extreme stress of the test is also a problem for students studying, even leading to suicides being more common.  A more fair college application system would be one where poor kids are just as likely to do well as rich kids, not just a single test with all the pressure of your career behind it.