A student writes a slogan to cheer up his peers in Fuyang city, Anhui province. LU QIJIAN/VCG

More choices

Other top scorers have been willing to share their experiences, such as Guo Yi.

The 35-year-old scored top marks in the liberal arts gaokao in Anhui's provincial capital, Hefei, in 2000.

She doesn't even recall her score today.

"Maybe 610," she says.

"Is the total score 750?"

The total is something virtually every student is sweating at the moment.

Guo works at an online-advertisement company in Beijing, and previously worked at Chinese internet giant Baidu, after completing a Peking University graduate sociology program.

"I thought I'd have more freedom working for an internet company," she says.

"I left Baidu after half a year. I didn't feel I was suitable for the position."

She entered the web-advertising industry six months later and has worked in the sector since.

"Freedom doesn't mean I can do whatever I want. It means I don't have to do what I don't like," she explains.

"The gaokao enabled me to make choices."

Guo says she expected to go to Tsinghua, Peking or the University of Science and Technology of China (a top-tier science university based in Hefei) since she was 5 years old.

"School and the gaokao were things I had to do, rather than really wanted to do. But the exam enabled me to follow my dreams."