Wang Yuanyuan

    cheekywang@hotmail.com

    Students from outside the city have complained about the difference in entry requirements between them and local students at Shenzhen University.

    The university released its enrollment plan at the weekend, in which it revealed that the entry requirements for students of art subjects and science subjects in Shenzhen are 567 points and 542 points in the National College Entrance Examinations (NCEE) respectively. The entry scores for students of art subjects and science subjects from other parts of the province are 587 points and 585 points.

    The university plans to enroll 4,942 students in Guangdong Province, including 2,968 students with Shenzhen hukou, it said in a statement.

    The entry scores of the university are the highest of any non-key university in the province.

    “The entry score for science subjects is the same as the entry score for key universities in the province, but students with Shenzhen hukou can get into the university with 43 points less than us. We are doing the same papers at the NCEE, it is unfair,” said a student living in Sihui, Guangdong Province, on his microblog.

    The university said they lowered the entry score for local students because the university had to make sure that half of the students enrolled by the university were from Shenzhen.

    “Shenzhen University was founded by the local government, and it aims to offer high-quality higher education to local students, so the university will enroll more students from the city than other parts of the province. However, there are only 34,000 NCEE students in the city, so the competition is not very intense. More than 600,000 students in the province are attending the NCEE and Shenzhen University is one of the most popular universities among the non-key universities, which has resulted in high entry requirements for the other students,” said an official surnamed Qiu from the university’s admissions office.

    Several other universities in the province, such as Guangzhou University, Wuyi University and Guangzhou Medical University, also set higher requirements for students who don’t hold local hukou, the provincial education bureau said.

    According to a 10-year education development plan, Guangdong Province will gradually cancel the policy of favoring local students at universities in the province in 10 years and no preferential policy will be given to students who apply to attend universities in their home cities.