China's annual graduate school entrance exam kicks off
A record 4.74 million students signed up for the national postgraduate entrance exam held from Saturday to Monday, up by 170,000 from a year earlier, the Ministry of Education said on Saturday.
This marked an annual increase of 3.7 percent, considerably lower than the 21 percent recorded last year.
The ministry has demanded utmost efforts made by local exam authorities and universities in epidemic control to ensure the safety of test-takers and monitors.
It has asked local authorities to set up separate test centers for those who test positive for COVID-19 and advised examinees to wear mask during the exam.
According to a report by online education portal EOL, while well-known universities have seen slight increase or even a drop in applicants this year, less famous ones have witnessed big jump in test-takers, showing that more students are willing to settle down at less famous universities to avoid intense competition in the exam.
Applicants to Yunnan Minzu University jumped by 55 percent to 9,486 this year and Jiangxi Agricultural University has also witnessed an increase of around 40 percent in test-takers. Meanwhile, Nankai University in Tianjin and Beijing Forestry University have seen slight decrease in test-takers, the report said.
More attention should be paid on the increasingly more intense competition in the postgraduate exam, so that it would not become as stressful as the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, the report said.
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