Top university tours offer little reward

DURING THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS large numbers of visitors, mostly primary and middle school students from outside Beijing, can be seen lined up outside the gates of Peking University and Tsinghua University, waiting to enter the two most prestigious higher learning institutes in China for a campus tour. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

To minimize the disturbance the free campus tours cause to their learning and research activities, the two universities strictly control the number of visitors within a designated period of time each day.

In fact, only a small number of group visits organized by the two universities themselves aimed at attracting potential candidates from the best high schools across the country can be called in-depth tours. These visitors live on campus, listen to lectures and communicate with the college students and instructors.