College Admission Mode of Multiple Choices Based on Internet
Zhao-tong Wu 1, Li-ping Fu 2, Rui-xue Zhao 2
1
School of Marxism, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Research Center for Public Resource Management, School of Management, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Corresponding Author: Snow14princess@hotmail.com.
2
Abstract - As an important constituent of education
system in China, the reform and development of College
Entrance Examination (CEE) are supposed to be guided
under the concept of scientific development, so as to
“provide each student with a suitable education”. In recent
years, the reform of college admission system has been so
greatly improved that the rights and interests of the
student-applicants are better protected, though much effort
is still needed in accordance with “student-oriented”. This
thesis, on an analysis of pros and cons upon the current
methods of college choosing and student enrolling, has
proposed an innovative, internet-based way of admission
mode for colleges. The core of this mode is established on
multi-application submitting to fully protect the rights and
interests of students. With the rapid development of society
in China, the mode will be one of the expecting ways in
reforming CEE.
Keywords - College Entrance Examination Enrollment
(CEEE), Internet, Multi-application
I. INTRODUCTION
As an important constituent of the educational system,
the reform and development of College Entrance
Examination (CEE) is supposed to follow the concept of
scientific development and be examinee-oriented, so as to
“provide each student with a suitable education”. In the
process of reformation, respecting individuality, giving
students more space of growth and helping students
develop in an all-around way, are the principles we are
pursuing. In recent years, the reform of CEE has been
greatly accelerated, and a lot of endeavor has been done
both on the examination evaluation system and admission
system.
As for the enrolment, the Ministry of Education has
allowed some colleges to enroll students independently
since 2003. Until 2010, 80 universities have begun the
independent enrollment. In addition, multi-ways of
enrollment such as enrollment by recommendation,
directional enrollment and the special granted enrollment
are gradually being available, which means both colleges
and students have more choices. However, the ways of
enrollment we mentioned are only available among a very
few examinees. The majority of students have to take the
CEE. After ranking by their scores, they can be accepted
Supported from key project of the Ministry of Education in 2009
(Grant GFA097009)
into colleges. In 2008, the Ministry of Education called for
innovations in the candidates’ information dealing process
and advised departments of Education in local provinces to
carry out parallel college-applying admission. In recent
years, more and more provinces have begun to implement
the policy of submitting applications when knowing the
scores and ranks of candidates. The parallel
college-applying submission effectively reduces the risks
in applying for the students. However, there are still some
problems, for example, how to help the candidates develop
in all-around way effectively; how to guarantee equal
opportunity to enter college for each student; how to
satisfy students’ needs of major preferences, so that
students can have a more free and individual way to
develop. This thesis, on an analysis of pros and cons upon
the current methods of college choosing and student
enrolling, has proposed an innovative way of admission
mode for colleges. Due to the limitation of space, this
thesis merely takes account of students who take the
unifying entrance examination, and assumes CEE’s scores
as the only references of college admission, not including
the issue of evaluation of comprehensive quality.
II. THE FRAME WORK OF COLLEGE ADMISSION MODE
OF MULTIPLE CHOICES BASED ON INTERNET
At present, there are three ways of college-application
submitting in China according to the submitting time:
submitting before the CEE, submitting after estimating on
CEE scores and submitting after knowing the CEE scores;
and according to the ways of gathering archives’
information, there are ordered college-applying admission
and parallel college-applying admission. Despite the fact
that all ways of application submitting share advantages of
their own, the flaws are also ominous. In order to enable
students have more choices, I put forward an
Internet-based mode of multi-application submitting, in
expect of solving the mentioned disadvantages.
College Admission Mode of Multiple Choices Based
on Internet (CAMMCBI) is an admission mode based on
the Internet and students oriented, whose framework is
shown in Figure 1 below.
Taking account of the various admission lines in
different regions, we’ll illustrate the example in one single
province shown in Fig1. The internet functions as a bridge
between colleges and students and the connection can be
easily built just through one net connected computer.
Student S1
Student S2
Client Server for
application submitting SC1
Client Server for
application submitting SC1
……
……
Student Sn
Client Server for appliCation submitting SCn
Internet
Server- side of local charging department A
Internet
Server-side for university
admitting UC1
University U1
Fig. 1.
Server-side for university
admitting UC1
University U2
……
Server-side for university
admitting UCn
……
University Un
Framework of CAMMCBI
As for the client-side for submitting, users can log in the
system for application processing as long as submitting the
right user’s name and the keywords, and then, they can
submit the final application after filling in and checking
personal information and other data. The system also has
pre-installed information such as the admission batch, the
recruiting plan, introduction about colleges and majors,
requirements for the applicators, requirements by the
charging departments and attentions. As for the server-side
for enrollment, relevant systems for recruiting must be
pre-installed. Users also log in by submitting their name
and keywords, and then they can read the detailed
information of all the applicants who submit to the
colleges, including the information of the college and
major they are interested in. As for the server-side in the
charging department, it will function as an agent, which
also plays an essential part in the whole process of
enrolment. In addition to the fundamental functions, the
system is supposed to share a series of additional functions,
for example, delivering electronic archives, printing
enrollment list, application confirming and so on. This
mode is mainly established on the computer and its
connection with the internet, so an unobstructed, steady
and safe network is the presupposition of successful
operation. In addition, the correct way of using all server
or client side of the system plays a crucial role.
III. THE OPERATING PROCEDURE OF CAMMCBI
In order to have a better illustration, now we set the
following assumptions: (1) the admission mode can be
only applied under the first batch of admission, not
covering other batches; (2) every student can only apply
for m (m is an integer,≥1) colleges and 1 major from each
college; (3) the final admission depends on the score of
the applicants; (4) assume that net connected computers
are available for all the applicants, meanwhile applicants
can make use of the computers correctly under a steady
operation conditions. Based on those four assumptions the
operation process of the CAMMCBI is shown as follows:
A. Pre-admission stage
1) After well learning about the colleges and majors,
student will submit their applications through the system
before the deadline. Their choices of colleges are not
ordered, and students only need to select the colleges
whose enrollment lines are close to their scores. When the
submission is over, all the relevant applying information
will be delivered right to the server-side for the local
education department.
2) The local education department will deliver
applicants’ information to the server side of each college.
We assume that one applicant’s information will be
delivered to m colleges.
3) Every college downloads the information of their
applicants. (In order to avoid spending too long a time
downloading, college could choose to mass download in
batches classified by the scores)
4) Colleges then begin to partly enroll some of the
applicants according to the pre-set principles. For example,
if the total enrollments is x in plan, to guarantee the
following enrolment, college will enroll ai  x applicants
in the first round ( ai is the admission index, the specific
value is the comprehensive results of considering these
factors: the admission lines of past years, this year’s
planning number of enrolment and the expecting number
of applications. Every college has an exclusive ai , which
can’t be comparable). Colleges will send pre-admitting
information to the qualified students.
5) When colleges complete their first round
enrollment, the relevant local education department will
issue the notice on the Internet and student applicants can
log in the system to check their enrollment. Every student
may be admitted by 0~m colleges. Due to the different
enrollment time length of each college, applicants may
have to wait for a period of time. To ensure the steadiness
and security of the Internet, the charging department can
ask applicants to check information and make the reply
within a specified time. Applicants will select one of the
colleges and cannot make the change once submitting the
final decision. And then the confirming information will be
delivered to the server side of college admitting.
6) College now begins to download the feedback of
y students
first round pre-enrollment. Suppose there are
confirm the admission, college can ask the local
department of education to delete their information from
the “agent” server side after transforming the information
into the database of “have been admitted” students. Then
college will update non-admitted applicants’ information,
meanwhile save the information of those students who
confirm the admission. That’s all for the first round
admission.
B. The second round admission
After the first round of admission, most colleges and
universities failed to complete the enrollment plan. Now
take the above college for example, suppose there are yet
x  y quotas of students to be enrolled. Of course,
colleges can follow the same procedure as that of the first
round. However, because the remaining majors are less
attractive to applicants, college needs to reset the
admission index. Suppose in the second round of
admission, the admission index is b , then the total
i
number of enrolment in the second round will be
bi  x  y , and bi is usually less than ai . Some
colleges may complete their enrolments through several
rounds of admission, when the admission plan is fulfilled,
college almost accomplish their entire mission in that
province. The following tasks are sending paper admission
notice, receiving sanction from local education department.
Then that’s the end of all procedures.
Client Server for
Student S submitting
④
①
Server- side of local
education department
⑤
②
⑥
……
Server-side for
university U1 admitting
Server-side for
university Um admitting
③
Fig. 2.
Flowchart of CAMMCBI
The connotation of those sequence number in Figure 2
is shown as follow：
1) Sending application information to the local
education department (mid June - late June)
2) Delivering the information to m colleges (late June early July)
3) m colleges examining applicants ’ information
(early July - mid July)
4) t of m colleges decide to admit Student S, and
sending the admission information to S (mid July - late
July)
5) Student S1 choose the College Ux among t colleges
(late July - early April)
6) College Ux asks the local education department to
delete information of Student S1 from the server, when
information is completely transferred to its server side.
IV. ANALYSIS ON THE CAMMCBI
It’s easy for student applicants to handle this mode of
applying, which can greatly reduce the proportion of failed
application and ensure students’ right to enter university.
Meanwhile, it’s also easy for colleges to implement the
admission procedure, which ensure colleges to able to
enroll well qualified students. In spite of that, this mode
lengthens the time of enrolling, increases the workload,
and reduces the efficiency. So how to set the limitation of
number of submission to either college or major is the key
problem to solve currently. The advantages and
disadvantages of CAMMCBI are shown as follows:
A. The strength of CAMMCBI
1) Fully reflects the spirit of “People oriented”
The new mode focuses on the students. Students have
their own interests and talents, strength and personalities,
profession preferences and career plans. The mode offers a
not very strict environment, in which there are more
choices, more chances of participating and more respect
for individual growth. When students devote themselves to
the higher learning and extracurricular activities with
relaxed nerves, happy mood and vibrant thoughts, their
potential can be best exploited. And for colleges and
universities, this mode adds the transparency in publicizing
information, which in return, reduces the amount of
workload and pressure as the result of applying this system.
In addition, colleges become more independent to enroll
better qualified students.
2) In terms of economical society, CEEAMMCBI are
more resources-conserved
At present, in most provinces and cities, application is
filled on paper materials, even online applications require
paper ones of confirmation. While in CAMMCBI, except
the admission notice, no other messages are transferred
with paper material. At the same time, high enrolling rates
leads to low examination retaking rate in senior school,
which effectively reduces the cost of education either in
economy or time. In the other term, many conservative
students now have a chance of gambling in applying for
better colleges, avoiding those colleges’ possibility of
vacant enrollment and making good use of educational
resources.
3) Effectively stopping the non-approved admission
and illegal agents
Based on the unified enrollment platform, referenced
admissions plan, CAMMCBI can effectively prevent the
fraud enrollment and the non-approved admission. As
CAMMCBI is a dynamic system, in which students and
colleges are connected only by provincial education
department, it can limit the activities of illegal agents to
ensure the rights and interests of majorities.
4) Easy to implement in the nationwide
CAMMCBI is established on the Internet and relevant
software system. With the popularity of Internet and the
development of society, CAMMCBI can equally guarantee
most provinces, large or small, developed or developing, to
process under one unified admission platform. In 2007 the
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region successfully realized
the first batch of undergraduate colleges online applying.
16 990 participated in and the whole process ran quite well.
This practice in this western province best verifies that
online application is feasible.
For example, the college entrance examination in
2009 (Science) in the city of Chongqing analyzed the data
more than 550 points. Set 20 points is a level, from high
to low, the data was divided into six levels. Similarly, set
20 points is a level, the data was divided into six levels
according to the minimum entry score of 985 institutions
in 2009.
For Pareto improvement on the current parallel
college-applying admission, CAMMCBI admission
mechanism can ensure high acceptance rate of the
candidates with high scores, and without large-scale
reducing the acceptance rate of the candidates with low
scores. Based on CAMMCBI admission mechanism, we
believe that:
1) All institutions can be accepted.
2) Candidates have the opportunity to be admitted as
long as the institutions are still enrolling, even if scores of
the candidates rank are lower than the level of institutions.
3) The coexistence of failed candidates and wasting
school admission quota will not occur.
Now do the following provisions: the probability of
candidates with more than 650 points but be refused by
the institutions which minimum entry scores is more than
650 points is x. The probability of refused ones by the
institutions which minimum entry scores between 630 to
B. The weakness of CAMMCBI
As a brand new way of admission, CAMMCBI
inevitably has some weaknesses to be solved. For example:
how to set the time of first round of admission, how to
determine the admission index, how to organize staffs
efficiently and how to guarantee the equity in the process.
In this thesis, we believe that among these problems, the
priority is to make sure how many colleges and majors
each student is limited to apply. If so or there is a way to
solve these two problems, the strength of CAMMCBI will
be fully realized.
V. DETERMINATION ON ARCHIVES NUMBER
Usually, it is a random process that, under
multi-application submitting mechanism, different bands
of candidates choose different levels of universities. Since
score rating of the candidates is given, last round has
nothing to do with multi-application submitting.
Therefore, the multi-application submitting process of
candidates can be approximated as a Markov process.
Markov process is a good description of the sequence
changes of the multi-application submitting process of
candidates.
Markov assumption means that:
1) the activity that specific candidate delivers his or
her wish to any admissions institutions of system only
depends on the score level of the candidate.
2) The transfer matrix is approximately stable. That
is to say, there is no different transition probability in
different candidates or no different transition probability
in different time.
In fact, despite the assumptions of the above is
demanding, the transfer matrix can approximately meets
this "smooth" assumption under the support of the stable
multi-application submitting environment and fixed
candidates scores. Particularly, for the state of the Markov
chain I, if
, that is: reaching the state I will
remain permanently in state I and will not stay or
re-transfer to other state. We call that state I absorbing
state. Similarly, in the process of multi-application
submitting, once the candidates accepted the invitation
and confirm online, will turn into a formal admission. Its
files will be deleted from the enrollment server and no
longer involved multi-application submitting.
Based on the analysis and assumptions of the above,
we can use the absorbing Markov analysis method to
establish the absorbing Markov chain model of the
candidates’ scores and college level sequence, and
analysis CAMMCBI admission mechanism from a
dynamic perspective.
650 points is
. The probability of be refused by the
institutions which minimum entry scores between 610 to
630 points is
, and so on. Assume that the probability
of candidates with more than 650 points be admitted is
equal to the probability of be admitted by the institutions
which minimum entry score is more than 650 points.
From the above, we can get the following equation:
+ + + + + + =1
Solve and get:
。
The reject-probability of other scores section of the
candidates is the same. Ultimately, we can get the transfer
matrix in the following table:
TABLE I
TRANSFER MATRIX FOR EACH GRADE
Enrollment Institution Level
Candidates
Score Level
>650
[630,65
0]
[610,63
0]
[590,61
0]
[570,59
0]
[550,57
0]
Admission
1
>650
0.3825
0.1463
0.056
0.0214
0.0082
0.0031
0.3825
2
[630,650]
0.4466
0.1995
0.0891
0.0398
0.0178
0.0079
0.1995
3
[610,630]
0.4764
0.227
0.1081
0.0515
0.0245
0.0117
0.1081
4
[590,610]
0.4887
0.2388
0.1167
0.057
0.0279
0.0136
0.057
5
[570,590]
0.4961
0.2461
0.1221
0.0606
0.0301
0.0149
0.0301
[550,570]
0.5
0.25
0.125
0.0625
0.0313
0.0156
0.0156
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
6
Admission
Converted into the standard form of absorbing
Markov chain:
Among them, Q represents the probability of 6*6
non-absorbing state (has not be admitted by the
institutions).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks for the support from key project of the
Ministry of Education in 2009 (Grant GFA097009).
REFERENCES
The average step length which from the refused of
institutions
to
reaching
the
absorbing
state:
represents column vector
1(non-abrobing state(refused)).
, among them, c
with 6 component
As this model has only one absorbing state, and each
state are connected. So each non-absorbing state is bound
to be absorbed after the transfer of the limited step.
Known by the t values, first grade candidates in the range
of the highest score submit 3, 1439 times can be admitted.
Candidates in the range of the sixth score (between
550-570points) need to submit 4.5419 times in order to be
admitted ultimately. In order to ensure the best
satisfaction of candidates, we selected 4.5419 as the
multi-application submitting times.
It should be noted that 4.5419 is only the average
expectation of candidates. Specific to a particular
candidate, the number of admission may be greater or less
than this average eventually. The same method based on
the CAMMCBI admission mechanism can be applied to
the number of majors.
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