Are You Smarter than a Chinese High Schooler?

As the school year comes to an end, students around the world are cramming for finals and some are prepping for graduation. In China, high school seniors have been taking the toughest exam of their lives - the gaokao (高考), China's National College Entrance Exam.

The standardized test is taken by nearly all high school students wishing to go to college. This year, some 9.33 million Chinese students took the exam, hoping to secure a spot at universities across China.

What I find interesting about the test are the essay questions that are asked. There are several questions that students must write 800 word responses to and there is some regional variation to what is asked.

One of the national essay questions that all examinees had to answer involved the owner of a sports lottery store who had bought a football lottery ticket for a customer for 1,024 yuan. The next day, he found out the ticket had won the big prize of 5.33 million yuan. Without hesitation, he gave the purchaser a call and gave the winning lottery ticket to him. Students were asked to write about what they would do if they were the ticket seller.

In Jiangsu, test-takers also had to write on the theme of 'refuse mediocrity' while in Zhejiang students had to write an essay on the topic 'my time.' These profound questions definitely make the SAT essay look much more straightforward.

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