More than 120,000 high school students in the quake-hit zones of Sichuan and Gansu provinces took the national college entrance examination yesterday, almost a month after examinees in the rest of the country sat for it.

In Sichuan, 96,421 students from 40 cities, districts and counties in Chengdu, Deyang, Mianyang, Guangyuan, Ya'an, as well as in the Aba Tibet and Qiang autonomous prefecture, started taking the three-day examination in 77 test centers.

About 82,000 students are sitting for the exam in prefabricated rooms set up in playgrounds, squares and other open spaces, said Liu Min, deputy chief of the Sichuan educational test institute.