Application And Admission Mechanism In The National College Entrance Exam

This paper discusses application and admission mechanism in the National College Entrance Exam. Application and admission mechanism is a key and difficult part during the NCEE reform. It is associcated closely with the populace interest, and plays an important role in promoting education fairness and education for all-around development.The contributions this paper makes are summaried in three aspects:(1) the research perspective is new. Different from most other studies, this paper trys to analyze application and admission machenism from the perspective of resource allocation based on the efficiency and fairness concept in economics. (2) The study methods are unique. The methods used in this paper include literature review, game theory, montecarlo simulation, empirical study and interview.This is the first doctoral dissertation studying from the economics perpective. (3) The suggestions this paper proposes are practical. Through theory and impirical study, this paper analyzes deeply the achievement of application and admission mechanism reform and the disadvantages exist in it. Based on the research findings and practice experiences in developed contries, this paper gives some useful and practical advices on the application and admission mechanism reform.This paper is arranged in six chapters, which are summaried as follows:The first chapter discusses the importance, contribution and framework of this paper. The second chapter reviews the historical trend of application and admission mechanism in NCEE. (1) Application and admission methods. With the development of internet technology and educational informatization, application methods changed from 'application in paper form' to 'application on line'. As for the admission methods, it developed in three stages: 'manual operation','computer assistance' and 'admission on line'. (2) Application timing. There are three kinds of application timing:'application before exam (ABE)','application after exam and before scores (ABS)' and' application after scores (AAS)'. Each kind has its own advantages and disadvanteges, and different provinces adopt different timing. In general, more and more provinces began to apply AAS. No matter what kind of application timing, students are involved in an application game, and' real time dynamics application' could solve this dilemma. (3) Admission mechanism. Admission mechanism is divided into three modes:'tiers choices','patial parallel choices' and 'complete parallel choices'. More and more provinces would change its admission mechanism into the last one. The number of school choices and speciality choices are also different among provinces and admission stage. Anyway, 'the second time application' is a good way to protect student from failing.The third chapter compares the application timing. We propose a theoretical model on the application and admission process in the NCEE, the parameter values of the model are calibrated based on the observed aggregate data and the model is solved by simulation. We find that AAS has the highest admission rate, and ABE has the lowest one. However, there will be more high-mark students failing under ABS or AAS, especially under more intense competition. If assessment error is controlled in a certain scope, ABS could relief the phenomenon of 'high-mark students failing'. As for the colleges, ABE would result in least number of admitted students, but the quality of admitted students is higher than the other two modes. With more information on score, students are better off in a whole, but some students are worse off, even including the high-mark students when competition becomes more intense. In general, AAS is the best way to protect most students' interest; however, it is not the best way to screen high-quality students. Using the student-level data from the NCEE, we find that the admission rate of their first choice is highest under AAS and lowest under ABE, which provides evidence for some theory conclusion.'Real time dynamics application (RTDA) can be seen as a game with complete information. This mode solves application dilemma for students and elimites the phenomenon of 'high-mark students failing'. Though RTDA is fair and Pareto Efficient, this mode is also not the best one for high quality students. 'Multi-NCEE' system is one of the solutions to dispose of this conflict.The fourth chapter discusses the admission methanism. Before 2008, nealy all provinces adopted 'tier choice', which is know as 'boston mechanism' in foreign literatures. The algorithm of Boston mechanism is simple and efficient, thus it is applied widely in school admission problem. However, Boston mechanism is neither fair nor Pareto Efficient. Most importantly, it is not strategy-proof. And finding a good school choice strategy is not an easy thing, especially with incomplete information.In 2008, the Ministry of Education began to promote 'parellel choices', the admission rule was changed from 'choices first' into 'scores first, follow choices'. The algorithem efficient of this 'score absoluta mechanism' is also high, and it is a fair, strategy-proof and Pareto Efficient mechanism when college value students based on their scores. However, when the school choices are limited in number, 'parellel choices' would not achieve an ideal effect and the application game is also difficult for students and parents. Yet our analysis suggests that 'parellel choices' with constraint is better than 'tier choices' under AAS, especially under intense competition, because it protects high-mark students, but 'partial parallel choices' is not significantly different from 'tier choices'. Moreover, by increasing the choice number or decreasing the submission ratio or applying in speciality choice, we could improve education fairness and efficiency futher more.If we allow colleges assess students according to their own standards other than scores,'parallel choices' is no longer a good way to sovle the admission problem. In that case, Gale-Shapley student optimal table mechasim (SOSM) is a good choice instead. SOSM is a fair, strategy-proof mechanism, and it is Perato Efficient than any other fair mechanism.The fifth chapter contains two special topics. The first topic empirically analyzes the assessment standard in the NCEE. We find that the scores in current NCEE reflect students' academical ability in certain degree, but comprehensive quality should also be considered when assessing a student's all-around ability. We also find that different schools should take different assess standards to meet their own requirments. These conclusions provide an empirical support to the necessity of application and admission reform.The second topic is about division of discipline. We analyze the consequence and the fairness of rescinding the discipline-dependent exam and admission system. We estimate an empirical model on college admissions. Based on this model, we find that rescinding the discipline-dependent testing and admission system would increase the admission rate of liberal arts students, largely because of an increase of liberal arts students' relative ranking comparing with the science students. And this would play an important role in protecting student interest and promting education fairness.The last chapter makes a conclusion about the whole paper, and gives some advices on the reform of national college entrance exam.