Chinese higher education admission unification exams were held on June 7 and June 8. The College Admission Examination has started to affect students and their parents and has also become the focal point that draws lots of attention from society. Some 8.67 million students took the exam.

Compared to 2004, the number of people taking the exam increased by 1.44 million. It was estimated that 4.75 million students will be admitted, and 2.3 million of them will be entering as undergraduate students. The undergraduate admission rate will be approximately 4 to 1.

Compared to 20 years ago when only one person could be admitted out of every dozen exam takers, nowadays the competition for admission is less intense. However, after 12 years of schooling, the College Admission Examination would determine whether the young people would have the opportunity to obtain a higher education. The test has a huge influence on the student’s future, and so both the exam takers and their parents are always very anxious about the outcome.

Some Students Fold Under the Pressure. Some Parents Die Suddenly from Stress-Related Symptoms

According to the mainland publication "Chinese Businessman Morning," on June 8, soon after the literature exam began on the first day, an exam taker from Jinzhou city, Liaoning province suddenly lost control of his temper. After tearing his exam paper, he also scratched the exam taker in the seat in front of him. Experts state this is a very typical symptom occurring in a person under intense stress. The high stress level can result in an acute neurosis response.
　　
China Net reported on June 7 that outside the exam classroom of Beijing Hongzhi Middle School, a parent, 40, suddenly died of a heart attack. Many parents expressed their exhaustion, saying, “The college admission exam is a hard road. We’ve worked so hard to get our children here!” Accompanying the children to prepare for the exam, finding consultation, picking the right college, preparing nutritious meals for the children, sending the children to the exam site for the three required days, anxiously looking forward to the exam results after the exams, and the enrollment results are all stress factors.　　

The tense atmosphere of the college admission exam also extends to society. According to a report, in Beijing during the College Admission Exam period, the municipal administration department forbade the broadcast of the commonly heard physical exercise music around the schools to prevent disturbing the exam. Lots of places even explicitly stipulate that the teachers who monitor the exam are not to wear high-heeled shoes, in order to avoid disturbing the exam taker’s performance. The National Environmental Protection Bureau has requested that all areas near the exam locations monitor the environmental noise during the college admission exam period.

Various Phenomena Occur During the College Admission Examination

Since the exam takers’ means of cheating have become more and more subtle in recent years, during this college admission exam, the testing locations have set up “cell phone signal shields,” “the electronic eye” and other surveillance devices to prevent cheating. An officer of the Ministry of Education has indicated that the brutal stress of the exam plus the popularization of the electronic devices had already expedited an underground industry to provide methods for cheating on the college admission exam. During last year’s college admission exam period, just in Anhui Province 134 exam takers were found cheating. These exam takers all wore wired or wireless earphones and carried a matching handset.
　　
Every year before the college admission exam, many students taking the exam and their parents go to the temples to seek help from the gods and Buddhas. The pilgrimages reach their peak in the last two or three days before the exam.

Merchants sell all sorts of strange and unusual examination techniques on the market. As early as a month before the exam, the college admission exam fortunetellers and the miniature earphone sellers and other small merchants start to advertise their wares. Health products and the related drugs also sell very well during this time. The parents will do anything to make their children successful. Many hotels also advertise the college admission exam hourly room, the college admission exam private room, as well as some discount priced college admission exam rooms to promote their rooms to exam takers arriving from out of town to take the test.

According to the report, the Beijing Yanshan hotel had a 50% discount in price to promote the hotel rooms near the college admission exam to the arriving students. Sixty college admission exam rooms were pre-booked by the end of May. In order to let their children walk a shorter distance to get to the testing site, and to allow more time for their children’s afternoon nap, some parents had to pay nearly one month’s rent on a hotel room for three days.
　　
Education Should Not Exist Just for the Sake of College Admission Exams
　　
Mainland writer Fu Guoyong pointed out that the reason there are so many abnormal occurrences around the time of the college entrance exams is because the college admission exam is a shortcut that leads to promotions, or getting rich and changing a person’s fortune. This idea is what creates this kind of extremely abnormal thinking. In order to lead the common people to look at the college admission exam as just another ordinary exam and another social selection mechanism, it needs the guidance of public opinion and the reform of the college admission exam system.

“The College Admission Exam is just one exam form. It is a means to an education, not the goal of one,” he said. “Education should not exist just for the sake of the college admission exam."