> So, in the past two years, suddenly, the number of domestic graduate students has increased in quantity, and the quality has improved even more.
Seems like the real test will be in the next 5-10 years, after the COVID situation goes away.
> In the past, it was impossible to persuade one of the top 20 in their class from Xiamen University to *go to* PKU graduate school.
> Now, among the top 20 students from their class in Nankai University, Beijing Normal University and other universities, half are roughly estimated to *have applied for* graduate school at PKU and Tsinghua University.
Applications are up, but does that necessarily mean they will go to the schools? Again, time will tell if this trend of staying domestic continues. It seems inevitable to me that after COVID, more students would again go abroad, but at the same time the quality of students that go to PKU/etc will continue to rise regardless.
Reminds me of how, in 1989 to early '90s, traditionally less-competitive universities got a lot more high-scoring students than usual. This was due to those top students choosing to study at universities closer to home, rather than leaving for higher-ranking schools in Beijing or Shanghai. For example, Pony Ma apparently scored well enough on the gaokao for Tsinghua/PKU/Fudan or something, but went to his local ShenZhen University instead.
However, that trend of staying local and foregoing your place at PKU or Fudan didn't continue, and high-scoring students today would not hesitate to go to Tsinghua or PKU or Fudan over their local universities. This may be the case for studying abroad too, but who knows!
Yet China overtook the US in scientific output and “high impact” studies last year, Japan’s Science and Technology Ministry found.
27% of the world’s top research papers were Chinese and 25% were American.
China published 407,000 scientific papers, pulling ahead of the US’s 293,000 and accounting for 23.4% of the world’s research output. SCMP
> So, in the past two years, suddenly, the number of domestic graduate students has increased in quantity, and the quality has improved even more.
Seems like the real test will be in the next 5-10 years, after the COVID situation goes away.
> In the past, it was impossible to persuade one of the top 20 in their class from Xiamen University to *go to* PKU graduate school.
> Now, among the top 20 students from their class in Nankai University, Beijing Normal University and other universities, half are roughly estimated to *have applied for* graduate school at PKU and Tsinghua University.
Applications are up, but does that necessarily mean they will go to the schools? Again, time will tell if this trend of staying domestic continues. It seems inevitable to me that after COVID, more students would again go abroad, but at the same time the quality of students that go to PKU/etc will continue to rise regardless.
Reminds me of how, in 1989 to early '90s, traditionally less-competitive universities got a lot more high-scoring students than usual. This was due to those top students choosing to study at universities closer to home, rather than leaving for higher-ranking schools in Beijing or Shanghai. For example, Pony Ma apparently scored well enough on the gaokao for Tsinghua/PKU/Fudan or something, but went to his local ShenZhen University instead.
However, that trend of staying local and foregoing your place at PKU or Fudan didn't continue, and high-scoring students today would not hesitate to go to Tsinghua or PKU or Fudan over their local universities. This may be the case for studying abroad too, but who knows!