Full marks for fake college essays

The annual college entrance exam has just concluded, and test papers are locked up until grading starts on Saturday.

However, according to a Xinhua report, publishers are already collecting “full-mark essays” for inclusion in an anthology of the top responses to the composition section of the exam. According to the report:

A high-ranked middle-school language arts teacher revealed the true situation: “In the years that I’ve edited full-mark essays, no essay came from the test site. Not only is the timing too tight, but there is no need. All I’m selling are the words ‘full-mark essays’.”

Another language arts teacher at a key Beijing middle school who declined to provide a name told this reporter, “Every year I provide many newspapers with ‘full-mark essays,’ but practically all of them I write myself according to the essay topic. Other colleagues also do it this way.”

In the days following the exam each year, the national media is filled with analyses of the essay questions. Papers invite big-name authors to reflect on the topics or to try their hand at answering them. Students testing in Beijing wrote about “symbols of Beijing” on Wednesday morning; by the evening of the same day, novelists Hai Yan and Liang Xiaosheng had already offered their thoughts on the subject in Beijing’s Mirror.

Typically, one or two particularly breathtaking “full-mark essays” will make the rounds of the online forums, sparking debates over whether they are genuinely creative or just empty, flowery language. Perhaps the argument this year will be over whether actual test-takers had anything to do with the essays at all.