FIERCE COMPETITION: Students walk out a test venue in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, for lunch break on February 20. They are taking the joint recruitment exam organized by the university consortium represented by Peking University (DONG JINLIN)

On February 26, a group of nine Chinese polytechnic universities, including Beijing Institute of Technology and Tianjin University, held a joint recruitment exam.

Two other consortiums of top Chinese universities each conducted a joint recruitment exam the previous weekend, just before the start of this spring semester in Chinese schools. One consortium consists of seven universities including Tsinghua University and the other consists of 13 universities including Peking University.

These written exams organized by university consortiums are supplement to annual national college entrance exam (NCEE), which had been the sole criteria for admission into China's institutes of higher learning for decades.

Students passing the written exams will be given an opportunity to take part in interviews. Those meeting selection criteria of a university will be awarded scores, which can be added to the grade of the national exam when they apply for that university.

For instance, applicants to Tsinghua University accredited through the independent recruitment exam will be awarded a maxim score of 60 bonus points, said a staff member at the Admission Office of Tsinghua University.

Not just any graduating high school student can sit in these independent exams. The examinees were chosen by at least one university in a consortium, based on application materials submitted by the students and their high schools.

The number of students sitting in these independent exams was about 1 percent of that in the national exam, said China Youth Daily. Statistics from the Ministry of Education show 9.57 million students took NCEE in 2010.

Fresh reform

Independent college entrance exams organized by university consortiums are part of Chinese universities' efforts to select students based on their own criteria.

"The exam organized by the consortium represented by Tsinghua University primarily assesses a student's creativity, imagination, judgment and learning ability, rather than examination skills gained through repeated drilling," said Yu Han, Director of Tsinghua University's Admission Office.

The independent recruitment exam was more difficult than NCEE, Yu said. He believes the test can reveal a student's academic strength and weakness, so that the school can better evaluate the student's potential in a specific field, and admit students based on their performance in one or a few subjects.

In addition to the aggregate score and scores in individual subjects, students would get an in-depth analysis of their grades in every subject, so that they could plan their future studies accordingly, Yu said.

Conventionally, university applicants in China are first ranked by their aggregate NCEE score. Cut-off points for admission into different tiers of universities are then set in light of planned admission rates. After that, the cut-off point for a university is determined by ranking its applicants according to its recruitment quota.

Admission solely based on aggregate NCEE score has been criticized. "NCEE is too simplistic to evaluate a student comprehensively," said Meng Qian, a former director of Tsinghua University's Admission Office.

NCEE could only show whether a student meets the requirements for high-school education, but it told little about whether the student has the research potential desired by a university, Meng said.

Moreover, NCEE could not exhibit a student's characteristics, whereas different universities have different education goals and prefer different types of students, said Tao Zhengsu, Director of the Admission Office in Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

NCEE is also criticized for not being able to adequately measure the ability of students who excel in some but not all subjects. Xu Ziwen, who has taught graduating high school students in Liuan No.1 Middle School in Anhui Province for 20 years, told China News Weekly he had seen quite a number of students with exceptional talent eliminated by the NCEE.

Five to six years ago, Xu was very impressed by a student's written skills. Xu expected the student to be a great writer, yet to his disappointment, the student, having tried twice, failed to score high enough in NCEE to enter a good university.

To solve these problems, in 2003, the Ministry of Education allowed 22 prestigious universities to select 5 percent of their freshmen by using their own criteria in combination with NCEE score. Now 80 universities across the country have been granted the same right.

These universities can award bonus scores to applicants based on interviews and recommendations of high school principals. The bonus scores can be added to the applicants' NCEE score.