{"id":859669,"date":"2025-07-02T19:12:51","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/02\/chinese-gakao-exam-is-the-toughest-entrance-exam-in-the-world\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T19:12:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:12:51","slug":"chinese-gakao-exam-is-the-toughest-entrance-exam-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/02\/chinese-gakao-exam-is-the-toughest-entrance-exam-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese GAKAO Exam Is The Toughest Entrance Exam In The World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The GAKAO exam (Chinese version of WAEC) , is about the most difficult exam in the world. Difficult and gruelling.<\/p>\n

Also, the top 10 universities in China have very high cut-off marks for the exam that only the top 5% of students are able to qualify.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s also the one exam with the most candidates in one sitting. This year there were close to 14 million candidates who sat for it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s gruelling because it has very ruthless time constraints.<\/p>\n

Exam so difficult that the brightest students who don\u2019t score high enough to make it into the best universities of their choice pick universities abroad as alternatives.<\/p>\n

I mean, it\u2019s very common for students who couldn\u2019t meet the GAKAO cut-off for a particular Chinese university to half-heartedly board a plane and head off to America or UK to study in MIT or Harvard or Oxford as alternatives.<\/p>\n

The best candidates in GAKAO don\u2019t even think of leaving China.<\/p>\n

Last year, a group of Chinese AI models plus ChatGPT 4o were put through the exams and the results were weird\u2026<\/p>\n

The models (especially the Chinese models , eg \u2013 Alibaba\u2019s Qwen2-72B) scored pretty well in the language tests.<\/p>\n

Achieving an average of 67% in Chinese and up to 81% in English .<\/p>\n

But surprisingly , the AI models were flopping like mad in Maths. Which confirmed one thing \u2013<\/p>\n

AI models at this time are extremely powerful at looking for patterns in data and recognizing them, leading to efficient summarizations, and what would seem like deductive reasoning.<\/p>\n

But fail seriously when tested with hardcore logical problems.<\/p>\n

And mheen, GAKAO exams contain a whole of such.<\/p>\n

On the effect of AI revolution on the exams, well\u2026 Let\u2019s look at Nigeria\u2019s statistics in WAEC and NECO.<\/p>\n

Two exams that are known for their increasingly porous nature. A porous nature that has proven to be largely responsible for the abnormal increase in pass rate in the few years.<\/p>\n

A phenomenon that has been possible with the increase in smartphone and internet penetration and of course ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

Last year and this year, in China, every AI tech firm in China stood still during the exams and as millions of students fought for their future during the exams, they had to do it without any backing whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Prior to the exams, AI tools providers cut off services , temporarily disabling features like chatbots, image recognition etc across their platforms.<\/p>\n

Some who didn\u2019t disable their tools, certainly blocked their models from touching anything that looked like an \u201cacademic question\u201d throughout that time.<\/p>\n

Cheating candidates who managed to upload questions to chatbots immediately got errors like \u201csorry, the image content is non compliant and process failed\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing that the integrity of the GAKAO exam is so high that the whole of China trusts it to be the sole decider of the future of their kids.<\/p>\n

No alternative exams. Nothing like double sitting. You either get it once, or you wait till next year.<\/p>\n

Any Chinese who has taken the exam will never use just one sentence to describe it\u2019s importance. Gakao is war and preparation centers (lesson centers) are like concentration camps. Candidates are enrolled and remain there till the exams.<\/p>\n

Parents bringing them food are forced to pass the food through cracks in the gates and fence.<\/p>\n

Also, the whole country supports candidates during the exam. Security measures are put in place and strengthened to protect candidates travelling to their centers and candidates get free rides even in government cars.<\/p>\n

The whole country practically grinds to a halt.<\/p>\n

That exam isn\u2019t just about gaining admission. The competitive, industrial and innovative spirit driving the wheels of China\u2019s revolution? Na there the foundation dey.<\/p>\n

It was under a thread where Gakao was being discussed I saw one overzealous Nigerian mother saying something like \u201cplease how can I register for this exam, I want my daughter to write it\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: Ma, with all due respect, please shut up ????????<\/p>\n

???? See people wey dey write \u201cordinary\u201d SSCE, see as dem dress like ninjas ??<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Hugo Blan
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GAKAO exam (Chinese version of WAEC) , is about the most difficult exam in the world. Difficult and gruelling. Also, the top 10 universities in China have very high cut-off marks for the exam that only the top 5% of students are able to qualify. I think it\u2019s also the one exam with the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":859670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[933,145024],"tags":[6623,145023],"class_list":{"0":"post-859669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chinese","8":"category-gakao","9":"tag-chinese","10":"tag-gakao"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}