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As August approaches, college admission letters are being distributed to students one after another. The young people who once worked together are about to go to all corners of the world and start a new chapter in their lives. At this point, many high school classes in Zhejiang"Food Map"Freshly baked.

The original intention of the "Free Meal Map" is to let everyone know the city distribution of each student's university, and it is also a beautiful continuation of youth and the friendship between classmates.However, because some class maps marked the specific whereabouts of each student, they indirectly reflected the school's academic pathways and became the basis for many people to analyze high school enrollment situations.

For high schools in Zhejiang, the most concerned number, besides the number of admissions to Peking University and Tsinghua University, is Zhejiang University. Some self-media even counted the number of students from key high schools admitted to Zhejiang University, and used this as a standard to measure the quality of education in key high schools.

Why is the number of Zhejiang University's admissions so high? Are the data circulating online reliable?

Map of a class in Hangzhou's top high school

If you search for "free meal map" on the Internet, you can find beautiful pictures posted by classes in many important high schools in Hangzhou. Some classes are so detailed that they even show the university that each student attends.

Student Wu is a graduate of a top high school in Hangzhou. Recently, a "free meal map" was created in the class to facilitate understanding of each student's graduation destination.

Looking at the "free meal map" of Wu's class, we can find that the top three cities are Hangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai, with 24 students in Hangzhou, 7 in Shanghai, and 11 in Beijing. The "free shipping area" of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai is still the first choice for students.

A "free meal map" of a class from another important high school shows that Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing are also the cities with the highest concentration of students, including 11 from Shanghai and 3 from Beijing. Among the 24 students in Hangzhou, 19 are from Zhejiang University.

A "free meal map" can reveal a lot of tricks.

Take Wu's class as an example. Zhejiang University is also a special case - more than 20 students who stayed in Zhejiang chose Zhejiang University. But there are exceptions. Some students met the admission score of Zhejiang University, but chose other universities for various reasons. "For example, there are students in our class who chose Zhejiang University of Technology because of their majors, and some people are obsessed with Beijing and filled in all the applications for universities in Beijing."

This is not an isolated case.

In the interview, several high school class teachers revealed that although Zhejiang University is favored by Zhejiang students, some candidates also make other choices due to factors such as majors and future development directions. "High-scoring candidates have many choices, some choose Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Jiaotong University, Renmin University, University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, Hong Kong University, etc., while others are not much above the score line, and choosing Zhejiang University can only fill in unpopular majors, so they will consider other universities outside the province."

Many people regard the "free meal map" as a "college destination table" of the school or class, which may not be accurate.

"The original intention of the free meal map is to get free meals, so our class took this into consideration when making it, hiding the real names of the students and the universities they attend," said Wu.Some "free meal maps" circulating on the Internet specifically mark the admitted schools of some classes. This may be a new method to deal with the current situation where high schools are not allowed to officially announce the good news of admission."There's no need to do that. The results of a class cannot represent the overall situation of a school. The destinations of students are also the result of individual choices."

Image source: cfp

In Zhejiang, Zhejiang University is undoubtedly the "ceiling that many students hope to reach" in their hearts, and it is also the "dream university near home" for many people, so the number of admissions to Zhejiang University attracts much attention every year.

With the release of the "Free Meal Map", many self-media outlets have recently counted and announced the number of admissions to Zhejiang University, a key university. However, many high school teachers have reported that the data is biased.

Statistics on the number of students admitted to Zhejiang University from multiple high schools on a certain self-media

"I saw a version that said there were omissions in the headcount statistics for our school, with a few students missing," said a teacher at a key high school in Hangzhou.

A teacher from another important high school revealed,Many schools have not announced the number of students admitted to Zhejiang University. During the statistical process, some self-media obtained the data from unofficial channels such as parents. The data discrepancies are quite large, and some even confused the concepts of "being admitted to Zhejiang University" and "reaching the admission line of Zhejiang University."

"Being admitted to Zhejiang University usually means being admitted by Zhejiang University, while reaching the admission score of Zhejiang University only means reaching this score. The two are not comparable." If different schools have different standards when collecting statistics, the deviation of the data will be large. "The final official data released by Zhejiang University should be taken as the standard."

Take 2024 as an example. Zhejiang University's enrollment plan in Zhejiang Province includes 2,044 unified college entrance examinations, 980 "three-in-one" comprehensive evaluations, in addition to the Strong Foundation Plan, foreign language recommendation and other admission methods, with a total enrollment of more than 3,000 people.

According to the information currently released, as the only ministry-affiliated university in the province, among all majors of Zhejiang University, the one with the highest admission score this year is the Experimental Class of Engineering (Turing Class of Zhu Kezhen College), which is 702 points and ranks 200th; while the one with the lowest admission score is Applied Biological Sciences (Agriculture, including the New Agricultural Science Experimental Class), which is 664 points and ranks 6791st.

"There are more than 3,000 enrollment plans, but the admission ranking is 6,791, which means that at least 4,000 candidates who met the admission score line of Zhejiang University were not admitted by Zhejiang University."Fang Wenbin, a teacher at the Binjiang Campus of Hangzhou No. 2 Middle School, analyzed that there are many reasons for this. For example, some candidates did not choose physics and chemistry at the same time, which did not meet the professional application standards; some candidates took the initiative to choose other universities, or went to higher education through recommended students, "especially those who are not much higher than the Zhejiang University admission score, and have too few professional choices, so they will choose other universities outside the province."

Yang Chunlin, a teacher at Hangzhou Changhe High School, said that there were two candidates in his class this year whose college entrance examination scores exceeded Zhejiang University's minimum admission score of 664 points, but because they did not like the related majors, they gave up Zhejiang University and chose a 985 university outside the province.

"One of the candidates, before the application deadline, hesitated for two days and deleted the low-scoring major of Zhejiang University, and changed his application to a favorite major of a 985 university outside the province." Teacher Yang said that this year's application found that compared with choosing a school, students are more inclined to choose their favorite major. "Reaching the Zhejiang University score line and being admitted to Zhejiang University are two completely different concepts. The number of people who reach the Zhejiang University score line is far greater than the number of admitted."

As one of the representatives of C9 universities, and because of its large number of students enrolled in Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University is highly recognized by Zhejiang candidates. Nowadays, many people use the number of Zhejiang University admissions as a measure of the high scores of key high schools.

"This indicator is quite reliable, because Zhejiang University has a large enrollment volume, which is indeed one of the most important criteria for evaluating key universities."A teacher from a top high school analyzed that the data often used for comparison among key high schools include the number of admissions to Peking University and Tsinghua University, the number of admissions to C9 universities, the number of admissions to 985 universities, or the number of students admitted through special control lines, etc.

Relatively speaking, Tsinghua and Peking University are concentrated in the top universities, and the number of students in ordinary schools is not large, so they are more suitable as the measurement standard for top universities; among C9 universities, the score lines of Harbin Institute of Technology and Xi'an Jiaotong University are somewhat different from those of several other universities; the number of admissions to 985 universities is affected by personal wishes in the application form, so it is difficult to accurately count and compare; for academic masters, the significance of the special control line is weaker. For example, this year, a high-scoring candidate with 640 points chose a police school for employment reasons, etc."On the whole, Zhejiang University, a leading university, has a larger number of students and covers a wider range, so it is a reference standard for major universities and colleges."

However, teachers also said that the number of students admitted to Zhejiang University can be used as a reference, but it is not the only criterion, and the quality of a high school cannot be judged based solely on this data.For example, at some top key high schools, many students choose schools with higher admission scores than Zhejiang University. It is not objective to only look at the number of students admitted to Zhejiang University.

The head teacher of a top high school said that last year, he taught a graduating class of more than 50 students, all of whom were admitted to Zhejiang University. In the end, Zhejiang University admitted 20 students, and many students chose Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Renmin University, Jiaotong University, University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, Nanjing University, etc. "If we only look at the number of students admitted to Zhejiang University, the number of students admitted to the parallel class I taught and this competition class is about the same, but the concept of admitting 20 people is different, and there is undoubtedly a difference between the two classes."

In addition, some teachers also mentioned that the number of students and the composition of students in each high school are different.

"Some high schools have 300 to 400 students, and some have 700 to 800. If we only look at the number of students admitted to Zhejiang University, it is not very fair." Some schools have set up regional classes, and the admission scores of these students are usually lower than those in the main urban areas. "If you don't know these internal situations, just looking at the simple number of students admitted to Zhejiang University is actually not very objective."