Independent Freshman Admission and Educational Inequality in the Access to Elite Higher Education

Abstract

Over the past decade, China has undertaken a significant institutional reform of its admission system in elite higher education (namely, Independent Freshman Admission, IFA), adopting a multistage selection strategy characterized by recommendation and interviews as an alternative channel of admission to the national college entrance examination (gaokao). Using IFA administrative data from Peking University, we reveal the mechanism of educational inequality through criterion transformations from standard test scores to comprehensive evaluations on competence. Significant associations were found between students' socioeconomic status origins, prior academic credentials, and whether they passed the selection process. This study contributes a unique and representative case of Chinese elite universities explaining why privileged groups maintained their advantages in this reform as well as in a rapidly expanded system of higher education. It also provides a better understanding of social stratification and elite reproduction in contemporary China.