On July 13, the 2018 SUSTech Undergraduate Admission work officially ended, with over a thousand top students from 22 provincial-level administrative units (“provinces” as follows) being accepted after taking the independent recruitment examination. It is also the seventh year that SUSTech employs the “6+3+1” comprehensive score system. The “6+3+1” comprehensive score system allocates 60% of the total score to the National College Entrance Examination (gaokao) results, SUSTech’s independent recruitment examination accounts for 30% and high school performance accounts for the remaining 10%.

 Students’ Average Scores Ranked around Top 1% of Selected Provinces

While the average scores of SUSTech’s newly admitted students fall within most provinces’ top 2%, students from some provinces represent an even higher quality of admitted students. On average, admitted students from Anhui province represented the top 1.2% of students, while Guangdong, Sichuan, and Guizhou students are at top 1.1% of students, and the average admitted student from Guangxi are among the top 0.97%.

Compared with last year’s admission results, there is a 50% increase in students ranking in the top thousand in their province. Among these students, some were even ranked in the top 200 of their province. When examining the big picture, the ranking of admitted students’ scores in multiple provinces has gone up by between 1000 to 3000 places. Provincial ranking of admitted students with the lowest score has significantly improved, with Jiangsu and Henan making a considerable leap of 6506 and 7012 places respectively.

 72% of Admitted Guangdong Students Are from Shenzhen

Among the 155 admitted students from Guangdong Province, the highest score is 670 while the lowest is 606. The provincial ranking of these students’ average score is within Guangdong’s top 4,000.

There is a surge in applications from key local high schools. 223 students from Shenzhen Senior High School applied, along with 211 from Shenzhen Foreign Languages University, 203 from Shenzhen Experimental School, 176 from Shenzhen Middle School, 163 from Shenzhen Bao’an Middle School, 160 from Hongling Middle School, and 149 from Shenzhen High School of Science. After careful selection, 111 Shenzhen students were admitted into SUSTech, accounting for 72% of students from Guangdong Province. 

5-Dimensional Independent Recruitment Test

SUSTech initiated and has successfully implemented the 3-dimensional “6+3+1 comprehensive score system,” whose mechanism was mentioned above. When looking in detail, the independent recruitment examination consists of two separate parts: a written comprehensive ability test and interview session. Additionally, the admissions office will also consider students’ outstanding qualities that are hard to quantify, making the “6+3+1 comprehensive score system” a de facto 5-dimensional scale serving the independent recruitment examination.

Due to the system’s focus on student’s comprehensive ability rather than only gaokao scores, it has been widely adopted in top universities across the Yangtze River Delta (Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang) and other parts of the country. 

32,000 Applicants from across the Country Aim for the South

In 2018, SUSTech saw a 20% increase in total applicants, taking the number to 32,000. The competition for admission into SUSTech is getting fiercer since the acceptance rate has come down to approximately 0.032%. The increasing competition has a lot to do with SUSTech’s rising reputation among key high schools from across China. There were 315 applicants from Shandong Experimental High School, Zhengzhou Foreign Language School, Shijiazhuang No.2 Middle School, Nanjing Jinling High School, Changsha Yali High School and Hefei 168 Middle School.

The first batch of acceptance letters for Guangxi and Shanghai students was sent on July 13, and all letters will be posted on July 20. The formal admission offers will arrive with a campus guide and a bundle of other materials, which will serve as a warm welcome to our future SUSTechers.