The National College Entrance Exam, or Gaokao, is the most influential exam in China. Most Chinese believe the Gaokao will likely determine the students’ destiny, because it will determine a wide variety of factors such as which college they will enter, which city they will go, who they are going to meet, what kind of job they will take and what their lives will be like.

The number of exam-takers has been dropping since it peaked at 10.5 million in 2008. This year, 9.39 million took the exam, 3 percent more than in 2013. It marked the first increase in five years.