高考 gāo kǎo

What it is

The gaokao is held on the same days across the country, starting on June 7. About 12.9 million students registered in 2026. The record was 13.42 million in 2024. In most cases there is no application essay, interview, or extracurricular record, and the exam score is the main admission factor.

Most candidates do receive a university place of some kind, because vocational colleges and lower-tier institutions admit many of them. Competition is concentrated on the small share of places at the best-known universities.

Format and scoring

Most provinces now use a format called “3+1+2”. Every student sits three required papers: 语文 (Chinese), 数学 (mathematics) and 外语 (usually English), each worth 150 points. Students then choose one of physics or history (100 points) and two of chemistry, biology, politics and geography. The usual total is 750 points. Shanghai's total is 660, and Hainan's is 900.

The Chinese paper includes a 作文 (essay) worth about 60 of its 150 points, with a minimum length of 800 characters. The prompt becomes public when the exam starts, and it is widely discussed online the same day.

Some provinces use nationally set papers and others set their own. The format has also been reformed in stages, so the exam differs by province and by year.

From score to place

Each province publishes cutoff lines (分数线) for the different tiers of institution. Students then submit a ranked list of choices (志愿), each naming a university and a major. Admission is decided by score rank within the province, so the order of the list affects the outcome.

Many families pay for advice on this stage. The term 志愿填报 (completing the application choices) trends each June. A student who qualifies for a university but not for the chosen major may be reassigned (调剂) to one that still has places.

A student who is not satisfied with the result can 复读: repeat the final year of high school and sit the exam again. This is permitted and common.

Vocabulary and customs

A candidate is a 考生 and the exam room is a 考场. Practice tests are 模拟考试, and the final weeks of revision are the 冲刺 (sprint). Many schools hold a 百日誓师 pledge ceremony a hundred days before the exam, and classrooms display a countdown (倒计时).

Several exam-day customs rely on wordplay. Mothers may wear a 旗袍 (qipao), because its first character is also the first character of 旗开得胜 (“to win at the first battle”). Families give zongzi, because 粽 (zòng) sounds like 中 (zhòng, “to hit the mark”), so 高粽 puns on 高中, meaning to pass with a high score. Common wishes are 高考加油 (good luck on the gaokao) and 金榜题名 (to have one's name on the list of successful candidates).

To fail to be admitted is 落榜. The idiom 名落孙山 (literally “the name falls behind Sun Shan”) also means failing to make the list. A province's top scorer is called a 状元. The Ministry of Education has repeatedly told schools and media not to promote top scorers.

Criticism and debate

Supporters argue that the exam is fair in procedure: papers are anonymized, scoring is standardized, and students from small towns can outscore students from large cities. Compared with admission based on recommendations or personal connections, this is widely seen as an advantage.

Critics raise three main points. First, quotas: universities allocate a set number of places to each province, and the numbers are unequal, so the same score can lead to different outcomes in different provinces. Second, workload: schools such as Hengshui High School in Hebei are known as “gaokao factories” for their strict timetables and heavy emphasis on drilling. Third, the private tutoring industry that grows around high-stakes exams.

Authorities also focus on exam security. Organized cheating and sitting the exam for someone else are crimes under Chinese law, and exam sites use metal detectors and signal blockers. In June 2025, several Chinese AI chatbot apps disabled their photo-recognition features during exam hours.

History

Selection by examination has a long history in China. The imperial 科举 system selected officials by exam for about thirteen centuries, until 1905. The People's Republic held its first unified college entrance exam in 1952. Exams were suspended during the Cultural Revolution, and university places were allocated by recommendation.

The exam was restored at the end of 1977. About 5.7 million people sat it, and about 270,000 were admitted. Since 2003 it has been held in early June, and its format has been changed by successive reforms.

Reading about the gaokao in Chinese

Chinese news coverage of the gaokao follows a regular order each June, so the same vocabulary recurs: 高考开考 (the exam begins), 作文题 (the essay prompt), 分数线公布 (cutoff scores are released), then 志愿填报 and 录取 (admission).

The character 考 appears in many related words: 考试 (exam), 考生, 考场, 考研 (the postgraduate entrance exam) and 中考 (the high-school entrance exam, usually taken at about age 15).