Home sweet home. I am back in Guangzhou, finally!
Cantonese-style black Char Siu
For those who don’t know, Guangzhou is one of the three first-tier cities in China (the others are Beijing amd Shanghai). But more importantly, we have a grounded and welcoming citizen culture, as well as the most delicious recipes in the world.
ice and fire pinapple bun with butter - best served with HK-style milk tea
Thanks to my dad’s obsession with luscious cuisine, our family gathered for a Saturday dinner, which is the source of inspiration for this blog. A friend sitting next to me has just finished his High School Entrance Examination and gone through the admission process.
sautéed boneless eel with green onions and ginger
Disclaimer: Having been a high school student in Guangzhou, I experienced the admission process myself years ago, where the mechanism was slightly different. The content today is based on a dinner talk and serves only for research purposes. In case of any potential mistakes, I apologize beforehand.
Now, let’s hit the topic…
In June, middle school graduates attend the High School Entrance Examination, and their scores then serve as the ranking metric in the subsequent admission process. Notably, students’ preference list is submitted before they take the exam.
Now for the mechanism. A high-level overview: Guangzhou’s high school admission mechanism involves multiple stages of the Boston mechanism, running centrally and sequentially. Perhaps due to the heterogeneity of student types and high school criteria, the multi-stage operation can introduce necessary versatility and flexibility to the admission process.
My brilliant friend was luckily admitted into his dream school in the second stage, which, according to him and his mother’s recall, is the most strategic and opportunistic stage among the admission process. For the second stage, first of all, the admission headcount of each high school is allocated to each middle school through a random lottery. Say we have M middle schools and N high schools; then we’ll have an M*N matrix of headcount assignment as a result of the lottery. The result of headcount assignment is then released and becomes public prior information for the second stage admission. Before the exam, students submit all of their preference lists (for all stages) before the exam takes place, which includes the preference list of the second-stage admission—exactly three slots for each student. Lastly, all students’ preference lists run through a Boston mechanism with respect to the headcount matrix as a constraint and a pre-determined reserved score line. If admitted, student exit the admission system; if not, student continue onto the third stage where another Boston mechanism with 6 preference slots for each student is run city-wise (compared to headcounts assigned school-wise).
What about the result? The mechanism doesn’t have an obvious dominant strategy, and there exists potential space for strategizing. According to my friend’s mother, it was during the second stage that they mainly spent time thinking about:
“The target high school (which is a very prestigious and popular school) that we opted for only has one headcount for his middle school. But everybody else in our middle school also dared not list that school as the first choice because there’s a super capable girl in our middle school who is probably going to score very high in the exam and would, for sure, secure that high school’s only headcount if she wants to. But we took a risk and listed that school as our first choice anyway—and we got in! It was so lucky… For one thing, surprisingly we outscored that girl in the exam eventually and managed to get that one-and-only headcount in the second stage admission; for another, if we try to get into that same high school in the subsequent third stage of the admission process, the score threshold (in the third stage) is even higher than what we reached.”
What a game! The second stage is quite novel because I didn’t have any impression of something similar back in my days. Though seemingly complicated, judging from my friend’s experience, the new mechanism certainly benefited some students and provided more geographical diversity among the admitted population. But I would also like to point out that since the second stage admission (school-wise assigned admission headcount) is based on the Boston mechanism and takes place within every middle school, there might be an incentive and potential for schools to strategize—coordinating students explicitly through open negotiations, so as to avoid the waste of headcount and stuff as many students into ideal high schools as possible.
Anyway…
The Boston-flavored high school admission mechanism in Guangzhou has been running for decades, and I’m so happy to see that it’s evolving and my friend got admitted into his dream school because of the improvement. The strategic nature of the admission process would force the students and their parents to thoroughly study their potential future high schools, thus possibly making more rational decisions. From another perspective, the headcount lottery would improve geographical diversity and equity among the city’s high schools. Nice.
Again, congratulations to my outstanding little fellow for achieving a milestone in his academic career and best wishes for his upcoming high school life! And hopefully, the blog contributes some insightful viewpoints to my dearest hometown.
Fun fact: family decisions are usually highly involved in the decision making process of high-school application. In our case, my friend’s mother helped and controlled throughout the process. BUT interestingly, his dad had completely no idea what is going on, at all.