Credibility concerns
On June 11, the ACT (American College Testing, a college entrance test) exam was canceled hours before it was to be administered in Hong Kong and South Korea because of leaked test papers, the Washington Post reported in June. The decision affected over 5,000 Chinese who went to Hong Kong to take the exam, some of whom might miss their early application for American universities.
It is just one of a wave of cheating and leaking scandals in China. In October 2014, the SAT scores of over 20,000 Chinese students were withheld for three weeks until November 22 due to allegations that some of the students were engaged in cheating, according to a New York Times report in 2014. Some of the students complained about being punished for something they did not do.
Wang Jiawei, a 19-year-old boy from Beijing, who enrolled at USF in 2015, thinks some Chinese students and parents are too utilitarian about the tests, resorting to cheating and faking records in some cases.
Wang said that due to the scandals, foreign universities, especially top ones have tightened the check for Chinese students' credentials and increase the threshold for Chinese applicants.
Nel said that educational consultants falsifying high school transcripts for students has made high school GPA an unreliable evaluation tool. He said USF has found that between 10 to 12 percent of all the transcripts they receive are fake.
China's burgeoning test preparation industry has made some tests unreliable. "Over the past few years, we also have found that the scores on the TOEFL are becoming less reliable," he said, adding that people are increasingly exploiting the "weaknesses in the testing procedure."
Nel further explained that only a relative small number of different versions of the TOEFL, for example, are used at any given time. Also, a large training organization has the resources to send people to take every test given. Thus they are able to reconstruct the tests and train students to do well simply by memorizing answers.
"The tests do change from year to year, but not fast enough. It is indeed the case that people have exploited time differences between, for example, Australia and China, to cheat," said Nel. "The gaokao, of course, suffers from none of these problems. The Chinese government goes to great lengths to ensure that there is almost no cheating on the gaokao, and the scores can be verified directly with provincial officials."
Gaokao reform
Although the gaokao has been accepted by more foreign universities, it is still not accepted by a majority of universities due to its own weaknesses.
The main problem is that many foreign universities cannot accept that it is a one-shot exam. Also, some believe that gaokao focuses more on memory rather than ability, according to a Xinhua News Agency report in 2015.
Nel also said that the English language component of the gaokao is not really designed to measure language proficiency to meet their standards, which is why they need the interview.
But Wang is optimistic that more foreign universities will accept gaokao scores in the future and largely attributes the increasing adoption to the recent gaokao reform.
In 2014, the Ministry of Education issued a guideline for the reform of the gaokao. It was aimed at selecting real talent by giving students and universities more choices and was in line with global exam reforms, the People's Daily reported in 2015.
Wang thinks that Beijing's Chinese language exam reform was successful.
"For the reading part, it stressed more on one's logic and thinking as a person instead of as a test machine, which gave me a misconception that I was taking an American standardized test," said Wang.
He also thinks using gaokao scores is more appropriate for people like him who did not get into the university of their choice. It is also an option for those who are uncertain about where they want to study. But according to him, the majority of the students who want to study abroad usually take the traditional route: preparing for exams like the SAT during their first or second year and getting offers between February and June of their third year, just before gaokao.
"This way, they can better prepare for going abroad and are more likely to get a top offer with a wider range of choices, especially for American and European universities," said Wang, noting that so far, British universities are yet to recognize gaokao scores.
Nel said he would like to see USF admitting the majority of its Chinese students via their gaokao scores in the future.
"We have already received inquiries from other American universities asking for assistance in creating a similar admission process," he said. "I believe the number of universities worldwide who follow our example will grow over the coming years."
