At the beginning of the new academic year, the percentage of rural students in Peking University's undergraduate courses was 14 percent. It's true that the ratio of rural students in institutions of Peking University has increased by 2-3 percent over the past two years. But it's also true that the overall percentage is still low.

China has made rapid progress in higher education in recent years. Last year, 9.15 million students took the national college entrance examination, out of which about 6.89 million got admitted to colleges. A large-scale increase in the number of seats in universities and colleges has raised the college admission ratio to 75 percent nationwide, providing greater opportunities to students to get higher education.

Yet not everyone in the country gets equal opportunity to seek quality higher education. In fact, rural students find it even harder to get admitted to one of the top universities.