Fewer candidates take graduate entrance test

The number of candidates older than 40 shows no significant increase.

Chongqing Daily reported on Saturday that among the city's 38,000 candidates this year, about 100 candidates are older than 40.

"We do have people close to 40 years old applying for our university this year," Li said. "But just a few."

Cheng Yue from Haitian Education, one of the most popular private training centers for graduate entrance examinations, said that even without the age limit, "getting admitted by a good university is still no easy task for people older than 40 years old".

"A major reason is that many among this age group do not have a bachelor's degree. This means the university they applied to needs to hold additional examinations for them, including oral English and major courses. And this makes getting admitted even harder for them."

Cheng said he has not received any inquiries from students older than 40 this year.

Cai Yongming, director of the graduate admissions office at the University of International Business and Economics, told China Daily that UIBE has people older than 40 applying this year, but the office did not have specific numbers.

"Usually, students who are in their mid- to late 30s want to get into our university for a master's degree for MBA and MPA," he said. "Their working experiences, especially some entrepreneurs' experiences, can be nicely combined with the MBA and MPA courses."

Cai also said that personally, he welcomes students over 40 to study at the university, as they bring diversity in the classrooms, where students are mainly in their 20s.

The examination over the weekend was also hailed as the most difficult in recent years. Cai said that this year, all the testing centers in Beijing are required to block WiFi signals.

Cai said that the testing center at his university had 3,300 candidates over the weekend. Each student needed to pass two security checks before getting into the classroom, and their identification cards were checked twice to make sure that no one was taking the exam for another person. Two teachers acted as test monitors in each classroom, and students were not allowed to leave the classroom during each examination.