In China, there are more than 2,000 companies related to college entrance examination applications. The top three provinces are Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Shandong. The fees can reach tens of thousands of yuan, but the results are not satisfactory.

In a sense, handing in papers is not the end of the college entrance examination, but filling out the application form is.

A total of 11.93 million candidates took the college entrance examination this year, which is also the year with the largest number of applicants since the college entrance examination was resumed. In this increasingly large data matching mechanism, voluntary reporting of has become particularly important.

It means business opportunities. In China, there are more than 2,000 companies related to college entrance examination applications. The top three provinces are Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Shandong. The fees can reach tens of thousands of yuan, but the results are not satisfactory. It's also about destiny. There are still many students who have to place their hopes here because of the lack of information support for voluntary application, which affects their future academic and employment choices.

Text | Yi Fangxing

Editor | Jinza

Operation | Chestnut

Volunteer War

One computer is not enough, you have to grab 3.

At 7 o'clock in the morning, without even eating breakfast, Chen Siyu's family from Inner Mongolia drove to the Internet cafe. The nearby Internet cafe was already full. It took ten minutes to drive to the new Internet cafe. She had investigated and found that the machines there were newer and faster.

In Inner Mongolia, Internet cafes are the final destination for candidates. Throughout July, it was hard to find a plane in Inner Mongolia. Each computer is chartered for 100 yuan a day. Chen Siyu chartered three computers, with a fine division of labor. “One computer is used to check the Beijing time accurate to the second, one is used to log in to the volunteer system, and the last computer is used to check university and major status at any time. "Every computer must have a "rudder" responsible for controlling it, and this job fell on her and her parents.

is different from the parallel volunteers in other provinces. Inner Mongolia adopts the only dynamic ranking mechanism in the country. In this system, candidates can see their ranking in real time after applying for their favorite colleges and majors, and their scores may also be changed. High-ranking people are squeezed out and can repeatedly modify their wishes until the system is shut down. However, each person can only choose one major from one institution.

Chen Siyu described it as "like stock trading", thrilling and exciting. Her score is good and she has passed the first line. What she has to do is to keep her name on the first batch of admissions list until the last second like a soldier guarding the city. Because once you are unsuccessful, you will slip into the second batch of admissions.

In this thrilling volunteer battle, another role became particularly important - the volunteer application expert Chen Siyu spent nearly 10,000 yuan to hire, who was also her military adviser. The rankings are changing, and the guidance of the military advisor will also change: What should we do next? Should you seek stability or follow your interests? How to find the perfect balance?

Like Chen Siyu, it only includes 3 computers, so it can only be regarded as ordinary. In order to win this war, one of her classmates bought 10 units in one go. Relatives, friends and teachers from the voluntary reporting agency sat in a row at the Internet cafe, ready to fight. Since every time you apply for a major, you have to enter a verification code, so even for such a small matter as filling in the verification code, this student asked the fastest teacher in the institution to do it. It took Chen Siyu seven to eight seconds to fill in a verification code. That The teacher may only need a second or two.

▲Picture / Visual China

Except for Inner Mongolia, which is the most exciting, other provinces also attach no less importance to voluntary application. Wang Xiaojue from Ankang City, Shaanxi Province, has been in high school since her second year of high school. Her parents have found a voluntary reporting agency for her. After signing the contract, she will have a dedicated tutor to record her monthly exams, major exams, and joint exam results every semester. After her college entrance examination scores are obtained, she will be provided with two 40-minute face-to-face guidance sessions to finalize her choice. In Ankang , a small city with the largest number of poor people in Shaanxi, such a service charges 6,000 yuan, which is still a discounted price. If you wait until you have reached the third year of high school before looking for it, the price will increase to more than 10,000 yuan.

On the day when the college entrance examination results were announced, Wang Xiaojue and her mother held their heads and cried for more than an hour.Her score also passed the first level, but it was 20 to 30 points lower than she estimated. She couldn't go to 985 outside the province. She felt "very unwilling, not at her own level." Although her parents never verbally asked for her grades, she saw great expectations from them - in order to ensure her lunch break, her mother specially found a "small dining table" for her, so that she could have a place to sleep after eating. Taking a nap; the application guide given by the voluntary application agency was "so thick, my mother filled it with notes."

Later, Wang Xiaojue and her parents got on the bus from Ankang and went to the voluntary reporting agency in Xi'an to receive the 40 minutes of face-to-face guidance. In the car, she looked out the window blankly, with a heavy heart. She felt like a defeated soldier and didn't know where to go next.

Information asymmetry

The confusion and frustration when filling out the application form are largely due to information asymmetry.

Looking back on the three years of high school, Chen Siyu never felt that the school or teachers provided any information support for filling out the college entrance examination application. There was no kind of education that guided her how to plan her life based on the college entrance examination application.

Until the day she filled out her application, she didn’t understand the difference between 985 and 211 universities, or what major she was interested in. The only thing that is clear is that she really wants to go to college in the south, especially Shanghai, because in her senior year of high school, she watched an idol drama, and some of the plots in that drama were filmed on the campus of Shanghai Normal University. .

Chen Siyu’s school pays more attention to grades than teaching students how to fill in their applications. There are a total of 23 classes in her grade, and only the first 4 are key classes. After each major exam, the entire grade will be ranked. The three students with the worst grades in the key classes will be demoted to non-key classes. Chen Siyu was also dismissed because of her good friend. Sad about being downgraded. In this mechanism, students feel a cruel reality beyond their age. Everyone is trying their best to "roll within " and get higher scores, and other needs come second.

There are also some schools and teachers that provide students with experience in filling out volunteer applications, but they are one-sided. When he was in Ankang, Shaanxi Province, Wang Xiaojue's high school teacher had a point of view - "Those who cannot pass the provincial examination are hopeless." Every time he mentioned this, the teacher's tone became stronger: "You must go to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to study." College can broaden your horizons. "

Once, Wang Xiaojue's grades fluctuated, and the teacher talked to her: "If this continues, you will have to go to college in the province." She once felt that if it really happened, "what would it be like. A disgraceful thing.” Ankang is underdeveloped, but education is valued. A popular local concept is that you must go out and never stay in the local area. When it came time to fill in the application form, Wang Xiaojue’s biggest wish was to apply for a school in another province.

Ye Xiaoyang is a postdoctoral fellow in educational economics at Brown University. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Peking University and a doctoral degree from University of Michigan. His research direction for many years has been to try to use behavioral economics and artificial intelligence to improve students' educational decisions, including the impact of filling in the college entrance examination application form on individual destiny, and how to fill in the application form more scientifically. He has been doing this research for seven years and has also felt the information asymmetry between many high school teachers and students in volunteer planning.

Once, Ye Xiaoyang conducted a survey on some high school teachers in Ningxia and found that some teachers did not even know what their parallel aspirations were. More than half of the teachers believe that their suggestions are important for students to fill out the application form, while only 5% of the students think so. Students from relatively disadvantaged family backgrounds face greater difficulties. He found that with the same college entrance examination scores, rural students would be admitted to schools with lower average quality and majors with worse employment prospects than urban students (i.e., "high scores, low admissions").

In contrast, Yangliu, also from Inner Mongolia, is much luckier. She studied in Tongliao No. 1 Middle School. Her class teacher was Liu Yanwei, who was in his early forties and taught English.Since the second year of high school, Mr. Liu has set aside half a self-study class every week to introduce his knowledge of universities and majors, talk to students about their future plans, and encourage them to choose a major based on their own interests. When holding parent-teacher meetings, he also emphasized to parents that they should help their children determine the direction they want to study in the future as early as possible. Later, Yang Liu learned that not every high school teacher would help students plan their lives like Teacher Liu did. There were also some students who ultimately had no choice but to choose guidance from volunteer institutions.

▲The organization that filled out the application form put up slogans that made candidates and parents excited. Picture / Zhang Bin (Fujian Branch) / China News Service / Visual China

Close combat

The real battle has begun.

Liu Siyu’s college entrance examination score was 550+, which was more than 70 points higher than the first-tier liberal arts school in Inner Mongolia. At 9 a.m., Inner Mongolia's dynamic volunteer system opened, and the deadline was 2 p.m. During these five hours, she had to find a "position" to hold on to, without wasting points or slipping.

The Internet cafe became noisy. Some parents lit cigarettes in their hands, and there was an air of anxiety everywhere. Before hiring an expert to fill in the application form, Liu Siyu looked for five or six backup volunteers in a book. But that day, the expert her family spent a lot of money to bring in temporarily suggested that she apply for early approval because "some schools that have been approved in advance are better than those in the first book." "Better." Her plan was disrupted and she had to find it now.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, this is the university she wanted to go to, but soon, she was squeezed out by people with higher scores. Then, she tried Beijing Foreign Studies University and was rejected again. At this time, she and her parents were already a little anxious, and they didn't even use their chopsticks for lunch. The expert suddenly made a suggestion: "You can apply for and for Overseas Chinese University." This is a university that Liu Siyu has never heard of. Experts said that this university is relatively unpopular and easy to apply for, and it is directly under the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee. Only later did Liu Siyu know that Huaqiao University was neither 985 nor 211.

Time waits for no one, and at this point, you can only listen to the experts. Liu Siyu first applied for the Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language major at Huaqiao University. This major only recruits two people in Inner Mongolia. When she filled it in, she was ranked second. But when the deadline was approaching, she was once again squeezed into third place by someone. It was too late to change universities, so she could only change her major, and she changed to , Chinese language and literature, and major.

At that time, no matter what major she chose, “as long as she could find a good job”. In her limited knowledge, Chinese language and literature, accounting, and law are the three most promising majors for employment. When she was in her senior year of high school, she had read the requirements for civil service positions and remembered that the demand for "Chinese language and literature" was relatively high, which was why she finally chose this major.

This time, she held her ground. For more than an hour, she ranked first among majors, more than ten points higher than the second place. At that time, she didn't think about "scores being wasted". She just felt very happy that she could finally register.

In contrast, Wang Xiaojue, who felt that he had failed the exam, adopted another strategy from the voluntary reporting agency. After a three-hour bus ride, Wang Xiaojue's family showed up at the voluntary reporting agency in Xi'an, where many parents had already gathered. It only takes three days to fill in the application form in Shaanxi, and all the needs are concentrated in these three days. It is said that the consultation will last 40 minutes, but almost every family will time out.

▲A pair of parents are checking the volunteer form for their children. Picture / Visual China

It was finally her turn. My father gave me some advice first, hoping that my daughter would enroll in a normal school major. But Wang Xiaojue was particularly reluctant to become a teacher. The teacher who filled out the application supported her and said, "You must respect the children's opinions." The rest of the conversation revolved around her. Shaanxi can fill in 6 parallel choices. For the first choice, she first chose University of Chinese Academy of Sciences . That year, Chinese Academy of Sciences recruited undergraduates in Shaanxi for the first time. Not many people knew about it, although the points were not enough. But you can give it a try. Her next choices were East China Normal University and Shandong University.The reason why she was willing to apply for the normal school program was because she felt, “If you can go to 985, the normal school program is also acceptable.”

But then the question comes: Should I fill in Shaanxi’s 211 Northwest University ? Under the influence of her class teacher, Wang Xiaojue wanted to go outside the province, but the teacher who filled out the form strongly suggested that she also fill it out, and the two had a disagreement. In the end, the teacher convinced her through professional advantages, closeness to interests and other reasons, and she added Chinese language and literature at Northwest University to her wish list.

Finally, she said to herself: Let fate happen.

The market is crazy

Voluntary application is a business. Every college entrance examination season is also the revenue-generating season for volunteer reporting institutions. Institutions are like bees chasing the flowering period, migrating frequently. They may finish tutoring in one province in the past few days, and then go to another province to continue.

In Yang Liu’s hometown of Tongliao, Inner Mongolia, organizations that volunteer to fill out the application form will pay close attention to when parents come to school, such as parent-teacher meetings and mobilization meetings. They will be notified in advance, stand in a row at the school gate, hand out colorful leaflets, and provide counseling. Students filled out their application form, and the average fee was more than 10,000 yuan.

Wang Xiaojue also worked part-time at a college entrance examination application filling agency. June 25th and 26th were the two busiest days at that time. The lobby of the organization could accommodate 100 people, but it was not enough during these two days, and the offices next door and upstairs had to be temporarily rented. The teachers didn't even bother to eat, so they could only take a few bites of bread. At that time, one of Wang Xiaojue's tasks was to appease the parents queuing outside. She found that most of the people who came for consultation were mothers, and very few fathers. The farthest mother lived in Yulin, . When she called this mother, the other mother was still doing farm work in the fields, but this mother finally died. It cost 9,000 yuan to provide such consultation for my daughter.

In the city where Chen Siyu is located, the most authoritative local volunteer application teacher charges 10,000 to 20,000 yuan per time. Moreover, this teacher will also invite four or five students who have the same time to complete the application form to the same Internet cafe to operate multiple lines at the same time. . In the local area, her family was not considered wealthy. Finding a well-known volunteer teacher at the time required her father to use his personal connections. It was even more difficult to make an appointment with a more famous teacher. Even if she found a way to find him, he would not necessarily There is a schedule. Chen Siyu's childhood was even more exaggerated. At that time, he spent more than 20,000 yuan on a voluntary application agency. This price meant that he could enjoy more luxurious services: there would be two application teachers and two computer operators to serve the entire process. family.

Chen Lei has established a voluntary reporting agency for eight years. At first, he felt that this job was just to make up for the information gap between candidates and parents. Later, he realized that it could not stop there. There will be some changes in policies related to the college entrance examination every year. First of all, it is necessary to "understand and understand all the rules of the game." This is almost an impossible task for any family. A large part of the work that institutions have to do This is it; the second is to help students build the decision-making model , how to prioritize interests, expertise, city, and income? This way you won't regret your decision in the end, because it's what you want.

▲Many candidates and parents do not know much about the college information before the college entrance examination and are in urgent need of professional help after the examination. Picture / Visual China

One year, Chen Lei met a girl with only enough marks to pass the second book. Her grades were average. Her family hoped that the girl would go to primary school or kindergarten to become a teacher in the future. But Chen Lei chatted and found that the girl is very caring and patient. She has adopted five stray cats and dogs. The first thing she does when she comes home from school every day is to feed the cats and dogs and take them for a walk. "She persisted with this throughout high school."

"I asked her, are you willing to deal with cats and dogs for a long time in the future? She said yes." During that consultation, Chen Lei persuaded her family not to force their children to go to normal school. He suggested enrolling in Yunnan Agricultural University Animal Science medical profession.

The fate of this girl has changed slightly because of her aspirations.After graduation, she worked in a pet hospital in Yunnan for three years. Later, she returned to Xi'an to start a business and opened a pet hospital with an annual income of one million. She even gave him a banner. Chen Lei often talks about this story. "So when we make decisions, especially selective decisions about life, we must start from the shining point of people."

However, this industry is a mixed bag. Different institutions and different experiences will have different strategies and pros and cons for filling out volunteers. "Some novices, without experience, like to put safety first." This is what happened to Chen Siyu when he was a child. His score just passed the second school. The institution promised that he would "definitely enroll in a second school." However, in the end, because of his conservative strategy, he chose a not-so-good school. Fa Xiao felt that his scores were wasted. .

As Ye Xiaoyang said, in the uncertain volunteer application battle, how to find the optimal solution is an eternal problem. This is not a problem that can be solved purely through commercial efforts. In the past few years, he has been exploring whether there are better ways, such as lectures with students and teachers, and one-on-one tutoring, to bridge the information gap.

Choose

In a sense, Chen Siyu and Wang Xiaojue are two similar people. Their grades were all above the first line, and they all suffered from a lack of information. In the end, they had to pay to seek help from volunteer teachers, and they all chose to major in Chinese language and literature. But different volunteer application teachers gave them different strategies. One pursued stability while the other was more pragmatic. In the end, there were different paths.

After completing the application form, Chen Siyu successfully received the admission notice from Huaqiao University. Her "war" was over and her wish to go south was fulfilled. During her four years in Fujian, the campus was lush and lush. She lived in a four-person dormitory with a private bathroom, and she was very satisfied.

But she will regret choosing a dual-Africa university. "Later, when I really start looking for a job, I will find that the boundaries between universities, such as 211 and 985, are quite clear. At this time, I will feel a little regretful."

She occasionally thinks of the family that spent a lot of money on. Ask the volunteer expert to fill in the form, "He will only be responsible for you once and help you get through this day. If you do go to college, he will make money. But in fact, a choice will affect many things behind you, such as your Job hunting, your future development.”

Wang Xiaojue from Ankang, Shaanxi, experienced different emotional changes. After 6 parallel choices, she was finally admitted to Northwestern University.

She was not very happy - she still failed to pass the exam and was exempted. In the summer after graduating from high school, her father drove her to visit Northwest University. All she could think about was: "This is the school I will stay at for the next four years. The school is very big, and I am not particularly satisfied. I’m not particularly dissatisfied.”

▲After Wang Xiaoju entered the school, Northwest University established Magnolia Lake. Picture / Visual China

The change in mentality occurred after entering university. She caught up with the renovation of Northwestern University, moved into a new dormitory building, had a new dining hall, and used a new gymnasium. Everything was new. She also learned a major that she liked and found it “quite interesting.” Chinese language and literature at Northwest University is a key major. Writers Jia Pingwa, Chi Zijian, and director Huang Jianxin all graduated from here. Even if you are looking for a job, the recognition in Xi'an is relatively high. This gradually made her realize that the head teacher's statement that "if you can't pass the Shaanxi exam, you will have no future" was actually not that absolute.

Wang Xiaojue was even a little grateful to the teacher at the volunteer institution who respected her interests and added the option of Northwest University for her. Especially after the graduate student was admitted to East China Normal University, she believed this even more. "Which city you study in university actually doesn't have such a profound impact. Even if I went to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, I would still be miserable if I studied a major I didn't like."

The article was originally created by Daily People, and is copyright infringement It must be investigated.