Everyone knew that the Jiangnan Province’s college entrance examination would be extremely difficult. It wasn’t anything like the national examinations as the students had to take a
small college entrance examination
in the second year of high school. There was a total of four subjects, and if one were to score an A in all subjects, they would be awarded five points. However, if they failed to get an A for any one of the subjects, they would only have three points.
These four subjects could be anything from Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, History, and Politics, while the remaining two would serve as majors.
Naturally, Zhao Youyue chose Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Geography at the time of her
small college entrance examination.
As a liberal arts student, she would major in History and Politics.
Zhao Youyue’s class teacher, Old Qiu, had attempted to talk her into taking science instead. The world seemed to think that science majors were born winners. They were better humans. They had better chances of getting employed…
Employment, what’s that? Can it be eaten? Zhao Youyue was too lazy to get involved in that. Moreover, liberal arts required less effort, compared to science.
Also, if she took liberal arts, would she be able to get away from the pile of mess that was the hardworking genius Huang Zongchao, and emerge decisively as the number one student in liberal arts?
Conversely, she had her family background to fall back on. After all, her mother was a university professor who taught the Chinese language and literature
In any case, she chose liberal arts, and she was extremely well-versed in it. She loved those subjects that required memorizing the most. The Xu Jing card would have its fill there. She did not need it activated to recall whatever it has memorized!
For liberal arts, language took up 200 points (inclusive of 40 supplementary points), Mathematics took up 160 points, and English took up 120 points, and everything totaled up to 480 points. That’s how Jiangnan Provincial College Entrance Examinations worked. If it was Science, the additional 40 points would be attached to Mathematics, instead.
Zhao Youyue’s college entrance examination results were: 143+36, which meant 179 points in total for language, 154 points in Mathematics, and 118 points in English, plus 5 points from the small college entrance examination. Her total score totaled up to 456 points! In addition to that, both History and Politics were, of course, A+.
It was almost humanly impossible. This was truly the results of a liberal arts scholar. It was the highest score ever in recent years!
A certain way behind her was the liberal arts student named Li Tianyu, who had obtained a total score of 428 points. Without Zhao Youyue, he would most certainly be the top scholar of this year’s liberal arts college entrance examination. The main difference between him and Zhao Youyue was English, as he only scored 102 points there.
Bai Yunshan failed to claim her second place. Looking at the results of everyone else in the province, she could not walk alongside Zhao Youyue anymore. Her total score was only 419 points, and she had lost a lot of ground in Mathematics. After all, the Mathematics paper in Jiangnan Province was on a totally different level. Did they mistake high school students for quantum physicists?
Those who participated in the Mathematics competition were finally able to reap the benefits of their long drills and preparations. Zhao Youyue had not participated in any competition. This time, she did not get a perfect score in Mathematics this time. Even someone like her had been stumped by the last question…
After all, the Xu Jing character card was not a genius card. It could not increase Zhao Youyue’s IQ. It was not a miracle worker, it had its limits!
With that in mind, Han Leng’s good friend Chen Haoran came atop the stage for a momentary salute. Despite the impossible odds, he had managed to achieve a perfect score!
Zhao Youyue was good, but she could not match up to raw, focused talent in very specific fields. Unfortunately Chen Haoran was not as proficient in language and English. Thus he only had a total score of 415. With that score, he could already enter both the Capital University and Chung Hua University. Generally speaking, the cutoff points for the two top schools was about 400. Any combination of A+ and A in the both of their major subjects would have sufficed.
This year, the top Science scorer for the Jiangnan Province college entrance examinations had a score of 443. It was actually a girl. Even though she did not score full marks for Mathematics, she still scored a whopping 143 points out of 160 for her language!
Therefore, in a sense, girls who chose Science also held a special advantage. After all, Jiangnan Province only took the total scores of 3 subjects. Even if one did not score well in Mathematics, with the scores of language and English, one could still go against all the odds!
Comparing language score of Zhao Youyue with the language score of the top Science scholar could tell anyone that it was the limit. Getting a perfect score for composition-based questions were nigh impossible. Moreover, the modern reading comprehension section had been really tricky, and many students fell for the numerous traps…
God was the only being that could aid you in comprehension sections. Even if your thoughts were in line with the original creator, it would not be of any use. In actuality, you had to think like the examiner. Answering reading comprehension questions was a major headache for everyone. If there were no perfect answers, how was one supposed to answer?
Hence, for every single college entrance examinations, people would answer the reading comprehension based on their own understanding of the article, and end up getting their points deducted. Some creators would even complain on Weibo, complaining about something along the lines of,
the pink ribbon meant exactly what it was, just a pink ribbon!
The hottest phrase of this year apparently was
the fish’s eyes glowed with a strange light[1].
The original writer expressed that he knew nothing about it, and had no idea why he wrote it in the first place
However, no matter how much anyone complained, this would never change. This simply tradition. There was no other way for a reading comprehension section to be set.
Surprisingly, Han Leng’s results were pretty acceptable, considering how he was a carrier of the sophohigh disease. He had scored 350 points. It was actually good enough to be graded as an overall A. However, compared to the whole school, that score was more or less at the bottom. Such was the horror of being in this certain high school, where even their worst students were capable of getting into the top tier. 93% of the students had made it into the first tier. When second-tier students were included, that would be 98% of the whole school. For the last 2%, there was no hope for them. Their brains were actually functioning fine, but not their hearts.
Han Leng’s language score was had been dazzling. He scored 138+28 points, which totaled up to 166 points. It would be embarrassing to talk about his Mathematics and English results they had not even made three digits. However, he had actually scored a full 100% for his composition. It was indeed something amazing!
Even if he had successfully made his debut and became a bestselling writer, everyone knew that writing high school compositions was nothing like writing actual literature. Professional authors would actually struggle to write school-level essays, as there was a maximum word count of 800. 800 words could happen before the authors has even finished describing the premise of the story. Who went straight to the point, these days?
Han Leng’s essays were eloquent, concise, and highly thought-provoking. They had been perfect for the examiner’s appetite. Moreover, he finally paid attention to tidying up the front cover of the paper. Hence, he scored a perfect score in one fell swoop!
Even so, for the time being, no one paid any attention to a composition with perfect score. This was because everyone had their eyes transfixed on Zhao Youyue, the new, fresh from the oven, liberal arts scholar!
After being a side-character for such a long time, Zhao Youyue once again stole the limelight and became the heroine. This unbelievable score had shocked everyone to their cores!
Translation note :
[1] This is a real, existing controversial phrase which appeared in the Zhejiang Province’s college entrance examinations paper and attracted a lot of attention.
