On June 15th 2017, more than a thousand students came flocking to the SUSTech campus to take the Comprehensive Admissions Exam. This year, SUSTech continued to use the "machine test" approach after last year's success, and implemented enrolment campaigns in 20 different provinces and cities, setting up 237 test rooms to service a total number of 12659 candidates, and another 1264 pre-screened candidates in Shanghai and Zhejiang were invited for enrolment interviews.

SUSTech received 28 000 applications online from 22 provinces nationwide. After a preliminary selection, 14 000 were selected to participate in the Admissions exam, and the top 1000 will make it to the university next year.

During the morning, SUSTech itself as one of the Guangdong Province test area test center, ushered in in the first teaching building 1200 local candidates. A total of 2200 candidates took the test in Shenzhen in four test rooms, starting at 8:40am, to evaluate their skills in mathematics, physics, English and various other subjects such as chemistry, biology and information technology from which students could choose. One of the candidates from Shaoguan after the exam commented: "the mathematics was the most difficult, the physics was moderate, and the English exam was the simplest". Another candidate from the Shenzhen secondary school said: "it is about as challenging as the national college examination, but the additional question was very interesting, most high schools don't prepare us for that so it is really a test of the student's capabilities”. A candidate from Guangzhou said: "machine tests can deliver faster results, and reduce the process error rate, which makes the exam more fair and efficient”.

Candidates take the exam

SUSTech Chairperson Guo Yurong inspects the exams in progress

Principal Chen Shiyi watches over the students

The number of applications to SUSTech went from 19,000 last year to more than 28,000 for 2017, an increase of nearly 50%. Simlarly, the number of candidates to take the exam went from 11 774 last year, to over 14 000 this year, an increase of nearly 20%.

This year SUSTech is launching sweeping changes in a bid to consolidate discipline construction, faculty, education and teaching and other undertakings, and graduates will have an increasingly valued final graduation skillset. As of now, 60% of the 2017 graduates have been admitted to top overseas universities to pursue their studies, and for those that choose to work straight away 90% of graduates choose to stay in Guangdong and Shenzhen where opportunities are rife. All of them agree that in terms of educational philosophy and the international training model, SUSTech is an outstanding university.

The students are often accompanied by their parents and family, and one student's grandmother said "Our family is very happy, very proud, I hope he can start a great career in SUSTech.".

This year is the sixth year that the comprehensive evaluation admission model ("6 + 3 + 1" mode) is implemented. The model was first implemented by SUSTech in 2012 and is based on the students' college entrance examination scores, high school academic performance and SUSTech's own exam results, which weigh respectively 60%, 30% and 10%. This admissions system was one of the key reform policies of SUSTech in the perspective of the "national long-term education reform and development plan" spirit, to explore a comprehensive evaluation model.

Once the results from the examinations will be screened, the shortlisted students will soon be back for the face to face interviews, the next step in a highly competitive selection process.  

Edited by: Jeremy Welburn