The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2001–2012
China's gaokao parallel volunteers made it safe to aim high and keep a safety school
Provinces replaced sequential choices with score-first parallel matching; by 2012, 28 of 31 used it, cutting wasted high scores.
Chinese provincial college admissions authorities · Chinese Ministry of Education
The solution
China runs the world's largest centralized college admissions: about 10 million seniors compete each year for 6 million seats. Under the sequential mechanism, colleges processed first choices first, so a rejected first choice meant second and third choices were already full — 'a good score is worth less than a good strategy.'
The parallel mechanism, proposed by Tsinghua's former admissions director Zhenyi Wu and piloted by Hunan from 2001, lets students list several 'parallel' colleges per band. Students are sorted by score; each is matched to the first college on their list with space, so within a band choices carry equal priority and one dream school does not sink the rest.
Hunan adopted the full version in 2003; by 2012, 28 of 31 provinces used parallel volunteering. Research found it more stable and less manipulable than the sequential rule — in Shanghai's first year (2008), the number of students refusing the universities they were assigned fell about 40%.
Why it worked
- Score-first ordering means your rank, not your strategy, decides your fate
- Parallel choices within a band remove the penalty for listing reach schools
- The mechanism makes truthful lists safe, so gaming loses its point
- Fewer rejected high scorers means fewer wasted years and refusals
What can be applied
If a matching rule punishes honesty, applicants learn to game it and good outcomes get destroyed; process students in a priority order that makes their stated preferences safe to reveal.
Aftermath
Parallel volunteers became the standard gaokao admission rule nationwide, later adapted to 'college-major group' and 'one major + one college' formats in the new gaokao provinces. Market-design scholars still use it as the canonical example of a Chinese parallel mechanism, between Boston immediate acceptance and deferred acceptance.
Sources
- Chinese College Admissions and School Choice
- Optimizing China's College Entrance Examination: Integrating Deferred Acceptance Principles into the Parallel Volunteer System
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