Yes, I failed the college-to-university transfer exam.
I spent six months preparing for it.
My score was 320. The provincial control line was 325. The lowest admitted score was 335. Last year, the provincial line had been 302.
For those six months, I studied with last year’s cutoff in mind. Reality hit much harder than I expected.
So this is my record of how it went.
From the gaokao to the transfer exam
According to data online, Jiangxi is one of the provinces with the fiercest gaokao competition, second only to Henan in some discussions. For students in the 2023 graduating class, that year was the last round of the old curriculum and the old gaokao format. Starting the next year, everything shifted toward the new gaokao, new textbooks, and subject selection.
Some people had predicted that the 2026 transfer exam would feel as difficult as the 2023 gaokao. That turned out to be true, though not because the questions themselves became dramatically harder. The bigger reason was the change in the student pool.
In 2023, many students missed the undergraduate line by only a little. With the new gaokao system approaching, a number of them chose the college-to-university route instead. That meant the 2026 transfer exam saw both more candidates and stronger overall competition. I was part of that group.
Back when I had just finished high school, I had already seen people online saying that 2026 would be the “revenge year” for students from the 2023 gaokao who didn’t make it. At the time, it sounded like someone else’s story. Now I’m living inside it.
From a teacher-training college to exam prep
My family is not well-off, so I chose a public teacher-training college in Shangrao. Tuition was 3,780 yuan a year.
During the second half of my first year, the school organized a presentation about the transfer exam. The message was blunt: teaching majors are hard to place in jobs, and even the minimum standard often starts with a bachelor’s degree. After that, I began reading policy documents and trying to understand the exam structure.
In the end, I settled on the "Literature, History, and Philosophy" category. I now think of that decision as the beginning of all my trouble.
At the time, it was 2024, and the score line for that category had dropped to an unusually low 299. That gave me confidence.
So I focused on the major subject for that track: College Chinese.
Then last August, after I could no longer stand being exploited by an internship organization in Wenzhou, I returned to my hometown and began about six months of full preparation.
The days around the exam
On March 27, I left my hometown for Shangrao. On the 28th, I stayed in the hotel and went through all the materials I had brought with me. On the 29th, the exam officially began.
My test center was No. 6 Middle School in Guangxin District, Shangrao.
Three of my roommates went to the exam center with me. Two were in the education category, and one, like me, was in Literature, History, and Philosophy.
On the night of the 27th, the four of us had a meal together and made a wish that all of us would get through on the 29th.
What shocked me most on exam day was the number of people. The area around the test center was packed, and I heard that the Literature, History, and Philosophy category alone had around 30 exam rooms.
After the exam, I was the most downcast out of the four of us. The other three all seemed fairly relaxed and talked about how easy the questions had felt.
But reality turned out differently. Out of the four of us, only one actually made it.
Here were our scores:
- 342, Education — admitted to an independent college
- 320, Literature/History/Philosophy — failed
- 311, Literature/History/Philosophy — failed
- 294, Education — failed
The waiting
I spent the whole month of April following every bit of news related to the exam, and that gradually turned into anxiety.
Today, on the 28th, the Jiangxi education examination authority released the list of unfilled admission quotas. Unfortunately, there was not a single vacancy left in Literature, History, and Philosophy.
That meant it was over. I had definitively failed.
Strangely, that made me less anxious.
What now
For now, I’ll focus on finishing my remaining graduation requirements. A junior college diploma is still better than having nothing.
When I wrote this, my mind was a mess and I felt completely lost. It was basically a matter of writing down whatever came to me. Still, if you’ve read this far, thank you.