How does China mark Exam season?
普通高等学校招生全国统一考试（高考）
- Local date
- June 7, 2027–June 8, 2027
China's gaokao is the most concentrated of the seven. The Ministry of Education's 2026 admissions circular sets the national sitting for June 7 and 8, a date fixed since 2003 that does not move with the day of the week. What is distinctive is not only its brevity but that it is very nearly the sole gateway: the score determines which universities and majors a candidate may apply to, and institutions do not generally run their own entrance exams. During the exam cities reorganise around it — horns banned near test centres, construction halted, dedicated traffic lanes, and in some places shifted working hours to keep the school run clear. That scale of collective accommodation has no parallel in the other six.
What is this topic?
Every country here runs a national test that decides university places, but how tightly that decision is compressed varies enormously. China squeezes it into two days, June 7 and 8. Brazil does the opposite, spreading it across two Sundays a week apart in November. India goes further still, dispersing subject papers across nearly two months. Japan and Taiwan run a two-stage system: one national test, then each university's own. The United States is the only place with no national entrance exam at all. The same question — how an eighteen-year-old should be measured — gets seven different answers.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.