The gaokao (National College Entrance Examination) is a single high-stakes test that determines university placement for China’s 13+ million annual candidates. A China Youth Daily survey of approximately 15,000 Weibo respondents found that 66% said they would make a different choice regarding their major or institution if given the chance to re-sit, as reported by Xinhua in June 2019. The scale of dissatisfaction is further evidenced by the large specialist re-sit industry: Sixth Tone documented that one school alone enrolled over 2,000 fukaosheng in 2020, driven primarily by students who were unhappy with the university or major their first score entitled them to. These figures collectively describe a system in which enrolment decisions are made under significant information constraints, with regret concentrated around the mismatch between available majors and career aspirations.
The re-sitting route (fukaosheng) is common in China. The State Council confirmed that 13.42 million students sat the 2024 gaokao, a record high. Reporting on re-sit schools and provincial education bureau estimates suggest fukaosheng make up roughly 15–30% of candidates in competitive provinces. However, re-sitting does not reliably improve outcomes. Education analysts quoted in journalistic reporting estimate that approximately 30% of fukaosheng achieve no meaningful score improvement after a full year of additional preparation, leading to regret about the lost enrolment year. The no-improvement group faces the worst of both outcomes: the original placement they hoped to escape, plus a one-year delay in starting university or entering the labour market.
The 36-percentage-point gap (66% accepting vs. 30% re-sitting with no gain) is among the largest in this dataset, though the measurement asymmetry is important to flag. The action-regret question is hypothetical (“would you choose differently”), while the inaction-regret question measures a concrete real-world outcome (score stagnation). Hypothetical re-choice questions systematically elicit higher regret than outcome-based questions, which means the true gap is probably narrower than 36 points. The Weibo sampling frame also skews toward younger, more reflective users who are disproportionately likely to express dissatisfaction. Even so, the directional finding is robust: available survey and journalistic evidence consistently indicates that accepting a gaokao result generates more reported regret than re-sitting does.