Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

It seems to me that only the top [whatever] percent of a population is going to be able to get into a class of school of their choosing, and only a top [whatever] percent of those admitted to those schools are going to successfully graduate. Now, China's population is unfathomably large, so that means way more people are going to be rejected or fail to graduate. On the other hand, it also means way more people are going to be accepted and graduate. 10x the population should mean 10x the rejected people, but it should also mean 10x the accepted and 10x the graduated, right?

I don't really see why a larger population should mean that cheating is incentivized more, unless the real problem is an undersupply (proportionately) of education.

Now, if lack of education positions is the real problem, then cheating isn't a solution to that; rampant cheating just changes the equation from "top [whatever] get accepted" to "top [whatever] at cheating get accepted". But do those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a large population have more incentive to cheat than those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a small population? I don't see why. The incentives should be the same in either a large or a small population, right?

As anyone who has worked in undergraduate admissions will tell you, it is far more complex than that. But when n grows prohibitively large, you have to go with solutions that are less than ideal.

My alma mater, thirty years ago, eschewed the traditional college application in favor of a more homebrew approach: since it was a small liberal arts college, it felt that the best way to see if a student was a fit for the college was to place him there for a span of a week or so: meeting with professors, faculty, taking a tour of the place, making sure things 'clicked'. He or she took an exam at the end of it, focused less on trying to define the student intellectually and more whether or not they were engaged with the college: there were quizzes on campus trivia (we're the second oldest college in the nation, and talk about our history incessantly), open-ended questions about what they liked, et cetera -- all designed to see if the student was really meant to be a part of the college.

This worked twofold: it let the admissions faculty see whether or not the student was really taking the experience seriously, and it let the student see whether or not they wanted to take it seriously.

(Why no math tests? When a professor spends a few hours with a prospective student, they can generally deduce whether or not they're smart enough to handle the rigor.)

Today, such a practice is impossible: the number of applicants has increased by at least 20x. There literally are not enough days in the calendar.

The disadvantage is that you have no other way to prove yourself than a single test score. That's also why you're seeing such outrage, because that single test is going to open (or shut) a lot of doors.

(See above comment about O(n), he articulated it way better than me :P)