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‘Go ashore’ to graduate school: millions cheer online as Chinese student passes out with excitement after acing decisive exams to leave life’s uncertain waters behind
- Ordeal of girl who faints over high-scoring exam results comes after a year of frantic, isolated study far away from home
- Her obvious relief reflects the pressure students across China endure in the run-up to examinations which go a long way to deciding their future
Yuanyue Dang in Beijing
+ myNEWS
Published: 2:00pm, 28 Feb, 2023
One million people online have sent blessings to a student who passed out after hearing she had aced crucial exams which will go a long way to securing her future success in life. Photo: SCMP composite/handout
A Chinese girl who fainted from excitement over the high grades she achieved in her post-graduate admission exams has sent mainland social media into a congratulatory spin.
According to the online media outlet Muzhi Videos, she passed out in the coastal city of Taizhou in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang.
The girl was taken to hospital on February 21 after being overcome with excitement and relief on finding out she had scored 429 points in her preliminary tests for China’s graduate school entrance exams.
Students in China are required to take a written test with a total score of 500 in late December before being qualified for an interview assessment in March to enroll in postgraduate studies.
The girl’s mother, Jiang, told Muzhi Videos: “She had been studying alone in Yunnan and hadn’t been home for a year in preparation for the tests.”
Jiang said that her daughter, who attended university in Yunnan province, rented a place to live in the run-up to her exams and chose not to use her mobile phone at all during the lengthy period of study.
She added that her daughter had not been in good health which may have contributed to her fainting. She did, however, recover quickly.
“She was still studying while she was in the hospital, preparing for the interviews,” Jiang said, adding: “It’s quite hard for my daughter. She really wants to go to graduate school and I’m proud of her.”
Jiang did not reveal to which school her daughter had applied.
In China, there are two ways in which graduate schools recruit domestic students.
One is for elite universities to select top students from top-ranked schools around the country and guarantee them a place. The other, and most common, is the highly competitive graduate school entrance examination.
Over the past three years, young Chinese people have faced an increasingly pessimistic outlook due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2022, China produced 10.76 million university graduates, an increase of 1.67 million from 2021, the first time the nation has breached the 10-million mark.
Meanwhile, figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics show that in July 2022, when university students graduated, the unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds was nearly 20 per cent, the highest level since China began publishing figures in 2018.
This figure has fallen, but today it remains at three times the national average.
Against this backdrop, many graduates hope to change their future by pursuing postgraduate studies.
They refer to getting admitted as “going ashore”, as in leaving uncertain waters behind.
According to data published by the education website China Education Online, 4.74 million people registered for the postgraduate exams, which took place at the end of 2022.
While they all hope to become postgraduate students in the autumn of 2023, the admission ratio is only one-in-four.
The “fainting” video, which has caused much debate on mainland social media, has been viewed by more than one million people on Weibo.
One Weibo commenter said: “There is so much pressure in society now. Can we leave young people alone?”
