This year’s college entrance examination in mainland China will begin on June 7th, with a total of 13.42 million people registered for the exam. This is the first time since the resumption of the college entrance examination in 1977 that the number of candidates has exceeded 13 million, with around 4.13 million being repeaters. As a result, this year’s exam has been dubbed the “toughest in history” and may become the most brutal in history.
Last year, the number of candidates for the college entrance examination was 12.91 million, setting a new record. According to CCTV News, there are 13.42 million people registered for the national college entrance examination in 2024, an increase of 510,000 compared to last year, with a growth rate as high as 3.95%, once again reaching a new peak.
This marks the eighth consecutive year of increasing number of candidates for the college entrance examination since 2016, with a trend of fluctuating growth.
The growth rates from 2016 to 2020 were 0%, 3.7%, 5.7%, 3.9%, 0.6%. From 2021 to the present, the growth rates have reached 10.7%, 8.2%, and 3.9% respectively.
In 2023, the permanent populations of mega-cities like Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Hangzhou, and Suzhou with a GDP of over a trillion yuan did not reach 13.42 million, meaning that even if all residents of Xi’an took the exam together last year, the competition would not have been as fierce as this year’s.
It is expected that the admission cutoff scores for this year will also rise, almost becoming an inevitable trend. According to predictions, students scoring below 450 points in the history category and below 430 points in the physics category this year may not have a chance at undergraduate institutions.
Last year, the admission rates for examinees in Henan, Sichuan, and Guangdong were at the bottom of the country. Henan’s admission rate for “Tier-1” institutions ranked second to last nationwide, with the admission rate for “Project 985” at the bottom at 0.9%, while Sichuan’s undergraduate admission rate also ranked at the bottom nationwide, and Guangdong was also among the lowest.
This year, these three populous provinces are once again facing tough competition together. According to the data from each province, the position of Henan Province as a “major province for the college entrance examination” remains stable, welcoming 1.36 million candidates this year, an increase of 50,000 from last year, once again breaking historical records; Guangdong has added 30,000 more, and Sichuan has added 16,300. The number of candidates applying this year in these three provinces has increased, leading to potentially lower admission rates.
The number of candidates applying this year in Shandong is also surprising, exceeding one million, indicating a high level of intense competition among candidates from Shandong Province.
Another noteworthy aspect of this year’s record number of candidates is the high number of repeaters. According to People’s Daily, approximately 4.13 million repeaters are among the 2024 college entrance examination registrations, accounting for nearly one-third of the total number of candidates.
The expected number of undergraduate admissions in 2024 is 4.5 million, only 370,000 more than the number of repeaters.
According to data from Tutor Education, 17.5% of undergraduate students in universities have repeated a year. This inference is based on the “Research on the Learning and Development of Chinese University Students” conducted by Tsinghua University, which showed that from 2011 to 2018, the proportion of first-generation college students in undergraduate education has remained above 70%, with nearly 19.91% having taken the college entrance examination multiple times as repeaters, while non-first-generation college students account for 11.76%.
Based on the admission situation of the college entrance examination in 2023, many universities did not reach full capacity in admissions, and the popularity of various disciplines showed a polarized phenomenon. Some popular majors faced intense competition, while less popular majors had few candidates.
As a result, in 2023, some candidates were not admitted to their preferred majors and chose to repeat a year. Additionally, some candidates were only a few points away from the admission cutoff. Dissatisfied with the exam results, they also chose to repeat a year. These repeaters will likely contribute to the increase in the number of candidates for the 2024 college entrance examination.