A disabled student who scored high enough on the college entrance exams to get into China's top universities was facing a quandary.

Wei Xiang, 19, a high school graduate in Dingxi, Gansu province, had scored 648 points out of 750 on the gaokao this month.

But Wei, born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal cord is malformed, uses a wheelchair and needs help due to complications from his condition. Wei's mother, a nurse, has raised him by herself since his father died in 2005.