page_title: National College Entrance Examination
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: National College Entrance Examination / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A typical leafy alley on the Huazhong Technological University campus. The red banner praises the 18 local high school students who got highest scores in the national Gaokao examination
context_page_description: The National College Entrance Examination, commonly known as Gaokao, is an academic examination held annually in the People's Republic of China. This standardized test 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 senior high school, though there has been no age restriction since 2001.
  The exams last about nine hours over a period of two or three days, depending on the province. The Standard Chinese language and mathematics are included in all tests. Candidates can choose one of the subjects in English, French, Japanese, Russian, German and Spanish as a foreign language test. In addition, students must choose between two concentrations in most regions, either the social-science-oriented area or the natural-science-oriented area. Students who choose social sciences receive further testing in history, political science, and geography, while those who choose natural sciences are tested in physics, chemistry, and biology.
  In 2006, a record high of 9.5 million people applied for tertiary education entry in China.
context_section_description: The National College Entrance Examination was created in 1952.
  The unified national tertiary entrance examination in 1952 marked the start of reform of National Matriculation Tests Policies (NMTP) in the newly established PRC. With the implementation of the first Five Year Plan in 1953, the NMTP was further enhanced. After repeated discussions and experiments, the NMTP was eventually set as a fundamental policy system in 1959. From 1958, the tertiary entrance examination system was affected by the Great Leap Forward Movement. Soon, unified recruitment was replaced by separate recruitment by individual or allied tertiary education institutions. Meanwhile, political censorship on candidate students was enhanced. Since 1962, criticism of the NMTP system had become even harsher, because it hurt benefits of the working class. On July 1966, the NMTP was officially canceled and substituted by a new admission policy of recommending workers, farmers and soldiers to college. During the next ten years, the Down to the Countryside Movement, initiated by Mao Zedong, forced both senior and junior secondary school graduates, the so-called "intellectual youths", to go to the country and work as farmers in the villages. Against the backdrop of world revolution, millions of such young people,  joined the ranks of farmers, working and living alongside them. However, they were soon disillusioned by the reality of hard conditions in the countryside.
  In the early 1970s, Mao Zedong realized that internal political struggle had taken too big a toll on him as well as the nation and decided to resume the operation of universities. However, the students were selected based on political and family backgrounds rather than academic achievements. This practice continued until the death of Mao in September 1976. In late 1977, Deng Xiaoping, then under Hua Guofeng, the heir apparent of Mao, officially resumed the traditional examination based on academics, the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, which has continued to the present day.
  The first such examination after the Cultural Revolution took place in late 1977 and was a history-making event. There was no limit on the age or official educational background of examinees. Consequently, most of the hopefuls who had accumulated during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution and many others who simply wanted to try their luck emerged from society for the examination. The youngest were in their early teens and the oldest were in their late thirties. The questions in the examinations were designed by the individual provinces. The total number of candidate students for the national college entrance exam in 1977 was as many as 5.7 million. Although the Ministry of Education eventually expanded enrollment, adding 63,000 more to the admission quota, the admission ratio of 4.8% was the lowest in the history of the PRC, with only 272,971 students being admitted.
  Starting from 1978, the examination was uniformly designed by the Ministry of Education and all the students across the country took exactly the same examination.
  However, reforms on the content and form of the exam have never stopped, among which the permission for individual provinces to customize their own exams has been the most salient. The Ministry of Education allowed the College Enrollment Office of Shanghai to employ an independent exam in 1985, which was the beginning of provincial proposition. In the same year, Guangdong was also permitted to adopt independent proposition. Starting from 2003, Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang were allowed to adopt independent propositions. Till now, there have been 16 provinces and municipalities adopting customized exams.
  Although today's admission rate is much higher than in 1977, 1978 and before the 1990s, it is still fairly low compared to the availability of higher education in the Western world. Consequently, the examination is highly competitive, and the prospective examinees and their parents experience enormous pressure. For the majority, it is a watershed that divides two dramatical
caption: A banner on the HUST campus in Wuhan congratulates top exam score achievers from the university-affiliated high school
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