One thing I like about China's education system is the Gaokao entrance exams for universities. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, ugly, or beautiful. All it matters is how you score. It's as meritocratic as education can be.
At the very least, it's complicated. I went to an appallingly bad, fundamentalist religious high school (not my choice) that didn't offer extracurriculars, honors classes (never mind AP!) etc. and if I hadn't been able to do exceedingly well on standardized tests I could not have gotten in to the colleges I did. My parents did not pay for any test prep. I did learn and practice on my own though, which is how I know that evolution does not, in fact, teach that you can grow wings if you want them badly enough.
merit doesn't mean equal wealth spending to obtain a result. And it's not black and white.
Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing.
> universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.
and that is now called school isnt it? Everybody gets at least some minimal standard of schooling.
The fact is, meritocratic is meant to describe the opposite of nepotistic (or sometimes hereditary/aristocratic). Under a nepotistic system, no matter what you do, you cannot succeed without becoming the in-group somehow.
Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring will make their score higher if they have any kind of aptitude. Likewise if they have easy access to books, extra study resources, a quiet space for study, no family distractions or challenges, and so on.
Poor people typically have none of those extra resources. Some poor people with extreme talent will be able to overcome the challenges of relative poverty, but others with equal talent won't.
It's extremely hard to create a true meritocratic system, and Gaokao certainly isn't it.
So wouldn't it then be fairest to punish kids with high income or high wealth parents? Say set median household income. If parents make double this the score is automatically halved. If they make half it is doubled. Same on gross wealth. More wealth there is bigger the cut.
This would mean that says Musk's kids would need to get sufficiently higher scores than children of someone with no wealth.
If you had that system, and I was Elon Musk's kids, I would feel entirely justified in paying half the taxes society expects me to pay. Let's see if that logic works both ways.
> Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing.
If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic. If there 100 desired spots that are allocated by the exam, and 1000 students, and wealth (tutors/extra time etc) moves the needle enough to make a meaningful difference, it's basically nepotistic just the in-group is who's parents can afford it. Depending on where you are this can compound each generation.
> If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic.
Merit is about demonstrated ability, not how much effort, time, or money was put into getting the ability.
As long as you convert money into ability and ability into results, that's merit. Nepotism is when you convert money directly into results, buying a score.
Tutoring can provide some advantage to the richer, but at least in my anecdotal experience I have never seen the advantage provided by tutors being able to match what really motivated poorer students could achieve by self study, at least not in the countries where in the past there was good access to public libraries, or today there may exist cheap Internet access.
That it tends to become a caste system with extra steps (which steps provide a defense of the system as “fair”) is one of the chief criticisms of meritocracy (and criticism of the idea is where we got the term itself)
So as a society do we want to have people performing tasks based on demonstrated aptitude to perform those tasks, or to have people performing tasks based on achieving certain social and political outcomes?
The entire point of any such system is the latter thing anyway, regardless of how you go about it. I mean the higher-level point, like “why do we have any system at all?”
i very much beg to differ. A poor but high aptitude student today is able to escape the "caste" they're born into. Under a true nepotistic system, this cannot happen no matter how much aptitude he/she possesses.
I think the point is that some start with an advantage when it comes to earning merit because by luck of birth they were born to parents with a lot of wealth.
I don't think you can have a truly meritocratic system unless everyone starts on a level playing field with the same access to resources. That is not a system that exists anywhere on this planet.
only if you twist what you mean by meritocracy to mean equality.
Why don't you apply that exact same argument but to sports and athletics? People born with superior genes do perform better (ala, tall people in basketball).
Merit doesn't mean everyone starts at the same spot. Merit means your outcome is determined by how good you are at it - no matter how you get to become that good.
Khan Academy was free and used to obtain 99th percentile SAT scores. Academic resources for success are abundantly available, but they require discipline, time, and effort.
Well nothing is truly meritocratic - even with free tutoring, kids will still have different genetics, different home environments, different upbringings etc..
Colleges in the US that removed standardized testing from their applications, in the pursuit of trying to be more meritocratic, found that fewer students from underrepresented backgrounds got in, not more. In hindsight (and to some in foresight) this makes sense because now schools leaned more heavily on grades and extracurriculars, both of which can be gamed by wealthy families far more easily than a standardized test.
How do you figure? Many things in life are meritocratic. Apply for a job welding, they'll ask you to weld some coupons. If you can do it, you get the job, if you can't then you can't. If your father was a welder or a banker makes no difference, merit is about being able to do the work, not whether life was fair to get you to that skill level.
To me grades sound like easiest thing to tutor for. Especially if homework is involved. Even basic editing and feedback before submissions could make absolutely massive difference.
China has made for-profit extracurricular tutoring illegal since 2021. [1] Of course there can be under the table operations and discussion to be had about regionally biased gaokao difficulty, but I think it's worth recognizing gaokao being a real chance for upward class mobility, hence why it is so competitive.
Starting in 2020 when I was a new professor, I was contacted by a company that works with Chinese families to tutor their students directly. I would be paid $400 an hour to teach them online remotely.
Originally I thought it was because of COVID lockdowns and that may be part of it.
But the opportunities have continued since then. I stopped doing it as my career has become more involved but I still get solicitations from time to time, so it must be because of what you say.
Tutors barely move exam scores, particularly if they're only hired for test prep. You can crush tests without cramming, tutors or any of that if you just pay attention in class and do all optional homework.
you can also make a lot of money buy selling things for more than you bought them for, and lose weight by simply eating less. You can feel better by sleeping more, and going to the gym every day. You can get ahead in your career by becoming great friends with your boss and your boss' boss.
It turns out that often it being easy to describe in broad strokes how to do something doesn't make it easy to do in practise.
Paying attention in class might be a legitimate issue requiring medication for some people, but otherwise it, and doing optional assignments, are a choice.
> Paying attention in class might be a legitimate issue requiring medication for some people
Considering I would be classified as a member of this group, let me ask:
> but otherwise it, and doing optional assignments, are a choice
If attention is a choice, then how reliably can you control your attention based your choice?
For the sake of analogy, is being able to control one's attention like controlling one's breathe? As in, one can consciously be aware of and control their breathing to some degree, but without a conscious choice, breathing will still operate in the background. Or is attention something like a voluntary muscle movement which requires explicit intention?
I am asking because I have/had little to no control over my ability to focus. Thus, I am curious what it is like for others.
Sure, but tutoring involves learning and improving the skills at hand. Meritocracy doesn't mean equal opportunity, it means candidates are evaluated equally without regard to superficial characteristics like appearance. A meritocratic test will award higher scores to test takers that can read and analyze passages faster and solve math problems more reliability. Whether those test takers possess that ability innately, or built up that ability through loads of studying doesn't alter the fact that it's a meritocratic test.
Of course candidates that study more have an advantage. But that doesn't make it non-meritocratic. That'd be like saying a marathon isn't meritocratic because some people spend more time training.
Sure, but tutoring involves learning and improving the skills at hand. Meritocracy doesn't mean equal opportunity, it means candidates are evaluated equally without regard to superficial characteristics like appearance.
Of course candidates that study more have an advantage. But that doesn't make it non-meritocratic. That'd be like saying a marathon isn't meritocratic because some people spend more time training and conditioning.
The actual problem is that we are not blank slates, and wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent, and likewise give birth to predisposed-to-be-intelligent babies.
I always find it slightly ironic how mother nature gets so much reverence from ostensibly communal types, despite her being the most shamelessly power hungry entity ever conceived.
> wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent
Not "more intelligent", just "unusual in some way". People can be wealthier than average for all sorts of reasons unrelated to intelligence (as defined by IQ). Here's a sampling of them:
Being social and good at sales. Most successful real estate agents I've met don't strike me as particularly brilliant.
Working a boring job, living modestly, and investing in index funds for 20 years.
Winning the lottery (either literally, or by accidentally buying something cheaply that turned out to be worth a lot)
A lot of those correlate with intelligence and “grit.”
Being good at selling to people absolutely requires intelligence. So do many entertainment fields, and athletic achievement more than you might expect.
Investing consistently in an index fund over 20 years requires a bit of intelligence and a lot of grit.
I defined intelligence up-front as IQ points. IQ isn't perfect but it's the best single measure of raw cognitive ability we have.
Grit is basically conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is not correlated to intelligence. [1] This is why the stereotype of the dim but methodical plodder exists.
Sales ability is obviously a thing, since there are successful and unsuccessful people. But being able to connect with people (EQ) is crucial to be good at sales. Likeable people make more sales than unlikeable people. Being likeable is orthogonal to IQ.
I'm not denigrating successful entertainers' and athletes' cognitive abilities. They are brilliant in their fields. That's not the necessarily same thing as IQ. I'd expect the IQ distribution among that population be the same as the general population. That means some of them are high-IQ individuals in addition to being world-class singers or swimmers or actors, but most are average IQ.
> and athletic achievement more than you might expect.
Yeah, it flies in the face of Hollywood's jock/nerd dichotomy, but in my experience there's an awful lot of correlation between honors students and athletic participation. I think the root of it might be good genetics and early life nutrition contributing heavily to both.
Looking at all the horrible and macabre weapons of warfare, destruction, and death that humans have created, I find it hard to believe those instruments were imagined, engineered, and developed by unintelligent individuals.
If a child shows some sort of exceptional proclivity for academics, then I strongly believe there needs to be an examination for empathy and pro-social behaviors prior to being enrolled in some sort of advanced program.
> most crime in the aggregate is done by unintelligent people.
That is a tough one. For I believe there is more to reality than what data can currently capture. While I do agree that most violent crime is carried out by unintelligent people, there is an untold amount of crimes being committed by individuals that are average to beyond intelligent. So, I would argue the unintelligent ones get caught more frequently and that skews the perception that they commit more crime.
> If a child shows some sort of exceptional proclivity for academics, then I strongly believe there needs to be an examination for empathy and pro-social behaviors prior to being enrolled in some sort of advanced program.
Luckily that is no longer needed, as in capitalism such a person can provide good value to society just via greed. He shouldn't be a leader, but a greedy engineer isn't an issue.
Yes, behavioral genetics is the climate science of the left. If there are PhDs and university departments studying it, I'm not gonna be someone who sticks there head in the sand for the sake of their flavor of political identity.
They are studying it, while you are drawing your own conclusions from a cursory understanding.
Your claim that “wealthy people are more intelligent” is so incredibly problematic on so many levels, starting with the fundamental methodological problem that we do not have any reliable way to actually measure intelligence. Add to this the extremely obvious fact that some rich people have no other qualifications than being born with a trust fund, and some poor people face extreme obstacles to reaching their potential.
This world view is total, utter dogshit, completely removed from reality.
> Your claim that “wealthy people are more intelligent” is so incredibly problematic on so many levels
If you want people to listen to you then don't advertise your biases like this. Call it "wrong" instead of "problematic", calling it "problematic" shows you don't want to see that result and not just that you think its wrong.
No, I used it as a euphemism for “fascist”, which is a somewhat stronger descriptor than simply “wrong”.
The notion that the deeply oppressive status quo is somehow fair and just is one of the worst post-hoc rationalizations that purportedly smart people can fall into. Open your eyes.
I strongly disagree. I've gone through a similar education system and it's soul crushing to not perform well in those singular events that define your career and identity.
Chinese education is also extremely constrained by the practice of "teaching to the test" to the point that the Gaokao indirectly stands in the way of innovation and reform in education. Schools doing interesting things to improve the quality of education are historically not very competitive on the Gaokao anyway (e.g., some unusual rural schools where students historically have bad prospects anyway and parents are overburdened or indifferent) or explicitly trying to carve something out outside the college track (e.g., private tech/entrepreneurship schools created by big tech companies).
There may be some good things about the Gaokao but having spoken to some (Chinese) teachers in China, it's also a limiting factor for education prior to university in a lot of ways, limiting the freedom of teachers and driving up risk aversion in parents.
(It's also effectively graded on a regional curve, which might be a good thing but isn't meritocratic in the straightforward way you suggest.)
There are those who argue that the entire high school curriculum in the USA is formed and molded by College Board changes to the SAT (and similarly to the ACT).
It makes sense, if the SAT starts asking you do calculate epicycles, schools are going to add Ptolemy to the study, or look worse than those that did.
Or (some) western education is too unconstrained and have strayed from purpose.
Scope of gaokao = teaching the test is just teaching everything a well rounded student should know. it's not sats where you can cram a few test tactic sessions and get a few 100 extra points. At the end of the day, gaokao is there to beat knowledge floor/foundation into kids, and one would argue knowledge floor is very deep if you want to generate most bodies that can transition into technical tertiary. Like... if one want human capita pool to be launchpad for innovation, you don't make calculus optional to athletics or other extra curricular.
IMO useful perspective is PRC diaspora, who readily acknowledges they don't want their kids going through gaokao not because it's ineffective but because it's tough, and half the reason they immigrate is because their statistically mediocre kids can't hack it under gaokao, but with some east asian education rigour/pressure will still be top 5% students under western education.
I don't know this specific exam, but most of these can be gamed in the sense of learning to the test. So depending on what training resources someone has available (e.g. rich parents who can afford tutors), I'd consider them only partially meritocratic.
If this is the case, then why doesn’t everyone get the top a score? The answer is, of course, that it’s not so simple, and you can’t just learn to the test.
That’s just like with sports: anyone can learn how to train himself, and anyone can improve with training, but in the end, some people will end up faster, and some people will end up slower.
My point was exactly that the chances are NOT the same for everyone. A kid from an affluent family might have both better tutoring as well as fewer troubles in life that could deter from learning.
But of course, in addition to that, there is always also a genetic component, as in sports.
The question is what you're measuring. You can have a test that gives you whatever distribution of scores you like. But is the thing it measures competency in the subjects it tests, general intellectual ability, familiarity with the test format, etc.? The worst negative outcome is usually subordination of learning itself to preparing for the exam, which can happen even when the gatekeeping function of an exam still works perfectly.
All scientific research on this topic points to the conclusion that standardized test results are the single best predictor of subsequent academic performance. Some studies suggest that using GPA in addition to test results improves the prediction accuracy, but the marginal increase is very small, and it increases variance.
Everyone is well familiar with the downsides of standardized tests, but so far, nobody has proposed any alternative that better. Learning to the test is not great, but what’s the alternative? It’s not like anyone knows how to teach things that results in more actual knowledge and skills being attained despite lower test results.
> All scientific research on this topic points to the conclusion that standardized test results are the single best predictor of subsequent academic performance.
And academic performance is measured how? With standardized tests?
Obviously, yes. This is not circular: it is by no means tautological that people who did well on test X will do well on a completely different test Y that tests different knowledge and skills. The fact fact that it does gives strong evidence to the value of using these tests for admission.
It depends on what skills are necessary to succeed at test X and Y.
While the subject matter or details thereof might differ, it's possible that things like "knowing how to learn to the test (i.e. cramming)" or "reading between the lines of what the teacher/professor says is relevant" belongs to these skills. And these can absolutely be transferred between test X and Y.
So the question is, how much do these tests actually test skills in the subject matter and how much do they test "meta skills"?
The research shows that the tests are predictive almost precisely to the extent they test “meta skills”. We can even measure how much individual questions test meta skills vs specific skills. You can learn about this by searching for the terms “factor analysis” and “g-loading”.
The main problem I raised with the Gaokao isn't that it's biased, but that it has negative effects on the way education is conducted prior to university.
It's not difficult to find first-hand accounts of this; go browse social media posts by teachers in mainland China if you're curious.
There are similar problems of "teaching to the test" in other contexts, too.
I'm not categorically opposed to standardized testing and I never said I was.
China also bans test tutoring as a commercial service. Without a doubt people will still be able to find tutors if they're sufficiently capable, but the scale of this problem should be vastly altered by that action.
My take away is the assessment method must force the student to actually apply understanding and application of the material, and not simply look y regurgitate it.
What you are describing, or the lack thereof, is how the majority of my public education in a Southern US state felt. Ironically, my county had the highest test scores in the state too. Then again, perhaps that isn't ironic after all...
And a side note from me as a Pole - online I see many Americans speaking about how cruel Gaokao is, but... It's America that's outlier. I had the same style of exam in Poland to get to uni, and it's the same in the entire EU, and rest of the world. So I have no idea why Gaokao is singled out.
The US has plenty of exams, starting in early primary school. All states have Standards of Learning (SOL) exams every few years on the main subjects. Then, starting in high school, you have a combination of Advanced Placement (AP) subject exams (college level, often granting college credit) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exams, Scholastic Aptitude (SAT) or American College Test (ACT), SAT2 subject exams, and probably a few I've forgotten.
The SAT or ACT are technically the only ones "required" for college, but most of the elite schools expect AP or IB (which tends to give the students a year or two of calculus, a fourth year of foreign language, and some deeper dives into other sciences or social studies).
But, because it's split across so many tests, there's no single "score poorly and your life is ruined" exam.
True, I only listed it because, at least where I live, high schools often do one program or the other. If it's an IB school, you end up taking the APs on your own (ie, there isn't a class focused on that content, though the IB curriculum should, in theory, end up covering the same stuff, at least for the major subjects).
We have the SAT and ACT, and those are objective. The wealthy still pass disproportionately due to better tutoring specifically oriented to those tests. It’s Goodhart’s law.
That's fair, but... What's the alternative? Obviously someone's going to have better academic performance if you have tutors, there's no way around. Still, if you have good academic performance - you have it.
American system feels more unfair when you're given points for extracurriculars like playing instruments or sports, like that's not going to hold poorer children even more (also how's that related to academic performance at all? Unis should not care about unrelated things)
The university will argue that a well-rounded student body improves the experience for everybody. IE, a college that's 100% "nerds" won't be as good as college that's 80% "nerds", 10% "smart jocks", and 10% "band geeks" (or whatever other categories you want).
I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.
In Europe, university is treated as education for adults, not your entire life. Most universities are not campus resorts like in the US, but just buildings in the city itself, students live a normal life in the city, they rent a apartment or live in a dorm, take public transit to get to places, do sport at a sport place independent of the university, etc. You can live a well rounded life that way. The university is there so you learn your specialization. Of course people make friends there, but it doesn't have to be your entire life, and the university administrators job is not to meddle with people's social lives to make them "interesting", but to allow learning.
Our oldest unis are generally "downtown" or similar - Harvard, Princeton, UVA (sort of - Charlottesville is a really small city), etc. Though most do still have their own dormitory housing, at least for underclassmen.
The large campus-style uni is fairly recent creation - many came out of the land grant system during/after the Civil War. And even as newer unis have been created, they've followed that general design (even though they aren't land grant institutions).
Universities in the US and other countries are not the same, and comparing them is not really fruitful.
US universities do care about extracurriculars and GPA and other things because they aren’t optimizing for raw academic performance, they’re optimizing for various other things like an interesting student body (that attracts donors, professors, and future students), real-world networks, and so on.
No, that’s not even remotely close to what I wrote, at any level. In fact, it’s closer to the opposite, because selecting purely based on an abstract exam has nothing to do with being a real-world adult, whereas extracurriculars, internships, etc. do to some level.
And after graduation they can grind leetcode, and after that they can practice social cues to get in the management class. It's gamed tests all the way down.
> potentially more intelligent than the poorest group
It's easy to think this but its not true. There is just a ton of privilege involved in life. There are groups in India who purely tutor slum kids to the top IITs(the JEE exams in India are very hard).
On average more educated? Yes. More intelligent? Nah I see no data. Given the same access to resources I expect the kid from a poor family and a kid from a rich family to perform similarly.
I do not. Where do unintelligent people exist in your society?
And at a certain point the argument about equal access is entirely hypothetical. For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.
> Where do unintelligent people exist in your society?
Everywhere? Both in rich and poor households.
> For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.
Ah I thought the argument was more about genes(aka born smart) and not something like nutrition.
I think a good thought experiment is Formula 1. Most top F1 racers come from super rich backgrounds. Does that mean that more money == better driver? Its mostly a accessibility problem.
Well I’ll be charitable and interpret == as correlation as we are talking about averages.
From your conclusion you’re telling me wealth is completely random or the capabilities of children is completely random. Neither of those holds up to any scrutiny.
I don’t know what being born in the US has to do with the conversation.
The problem seems to be that intelligence is not entirely heritable; that just because unintelligent people fail to do well financially doesn't mean that their children are doomed to the same fate.
> Not entirely heritable? Or has no genetic correlation?
My understanding is that there is some genetic correlation but it's not a certainty; smart/rich parents can have dumbass kids and vice versa.
It's hard to quantify because a direct "IQ" measurement is fraught with issues and trying to measure by "success" has its own issues. If you've not met a lawyer/doctor/PhD that you'd put in the "dumbass" category, you probably haven't met many.
Yes. There as difference between unfair and unreal; someone who is malnourished when growing up will forever likely be weaker than someone who received a proper sequence of meals.
We should perhaps recognize that and try to compensate for it, and it's not a value judgement on the person so afflicted, but pretending it doesn't exist just confuses matters.
That's been the entire fight over the last 20+ years, does the test identify anything real and if so, what should be done with it (equality of outcomes vs equality of opportunity, e.g.).
I am currently living in Japan, and it seems that they follow the American style exams. I don't know if it is a result of the post-war occupation, or it was already like that before WW2.
Back home in Spain we follow the same style of a single national-level exam that you mentioned though.
Everyone has a tendency to support the system they went through. I've done it numerous times for standardized tests and I went through them. I think the information value of a person who was certified capable by system X recommending system X is probably low.
After all, if you flipped the script and the US used standardized tests and you were then told that China uses a committee of experts that will certify incoming applicants' stated political positions, race, and cultural background in order to "craft a class" (as an admissions officer calls it in SAT Wars) with a carve-out for the children of those who have already attended, you would be informed of the need for meritocracy, the tendency towards nepotism, and the obvious racial biases that will affect individuals in such a system.
Likewise, you would doubtless be informed that the East's more holistic look at the total student is a superior form of student selection since it is driven by a Confucian focus on the gestalt human rather than on the reductive metrics of the West.
What is interesting to me is to hear from those who have succeeded in some system but nonetheless wish it were different.
There's millions of Chinese diaspora who went through relatively zero-sum gaokao and have their kids go through western systems. IMO general consensus will will tell you centralized test will produce superior results but it's so tough / high stakes they won't want to put their kids through it. Many of them are also gaokao flunkies who had alternate pathways in era where with more easy/shady opportunities that are now gated behind actual gaokao performance, and they know statistically their kids can't hack it. So course they want system to be different in the same way US system is different - some nebulous holistic system, aka one where there's ample opportunities for their money to corrupt/capture. TBH last 1000s of years of Chinese history is interrogation of monied merchant class trying to capture (more) merited scholar class, the lessons learned (repeatedly) is venturing away from standardized/merit is just opening up to deregulated corruption.
I don't know how this exam is in China and Poland, but from what I've seen about the south Korean one it is much harsher on the students than the french one, even in my time
Yeah, I definitely didn't do any kind of entrance exam to get into University so unless there have been more recent changes to it it's not needed for all subjects. And its also not needed if you can just filter out bad students via normal exams in the first semesters.
Your single exam performance doesn't forever assign you to a class of people, you still have an opportunity to redo the exam next year or to be successful even without a degree. That's not possible in China nor Korea. Even in Germany flunking a class might ban you from ever retaking it at any other German university.
Because they want to say that China is bad. When, as you say, US is the outlier in inventing strange ways to admit kids to college. I'm from Brazil and the entrance is exam is similar to China, there is a single exam and the note is used to determine which college you can go.
I don’t really find it strange, if anything a slavish obsession to test scores strikes me as strange. School is just an artificial institution like any other, it’s not as if getting good grades is equivalent real-world success or “true” intelligence.
The US also has the best universities in the world, by and large, (even if the regular education system is lacking), so I am pretty skeptical of the idea that raw test scores as the sole criterion would lead to better outcomes.
Raw test scores are a good idea in many countries because it reduces scope for corruption + gives even the poorest kids a chance. Though I would argue there needs to be multiple chances a year and not just 1.
Wow! So advanced! Does the rest of the world do the same with jobs (a single exam to determine if you get hired to any company), or does it invent strange ways to interview and hire applicants well?
Taiwan and Korea have even "fairer" systems. In China different provinces got different test problems. Especially students from Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin get completely different ones. In Taiwan/Korea everyone takes the exact same test.
However I've never met anyone from these countries who have a high opinion of their systems. Personally I do think our standardized exams cause massive 'overfitting' issue (borrowed from machine learning). The exam is not as brutal as Korean one though.
The problem is the high stress generated by the one-shot approach. There has to be a balance between the objectivity of a single test and practical concerns (like choking because you were sick or got bad sleep the night before).
Ultimately, the only "fair" outcome is an abundance of opportunity. The vast majority of people are worth something to their community and society. And even then, as long as there's enough food and shelter to go around, no one should have to justify their mere existence.
The systems may not be held in high regard, but their education systems produce workers responsible for great innovation, productivity and economic growth.
As the other user posted, practicing for tests are extremely important. I grew up middle class, got an average score on my tests (but I did really well in math)
My wife, upper middle class, took entire weeks of courses and scored higher than me on everything. But I am better than her at math for sure.
