alt Hacker NewsSomeone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring will make their score higher if they have any kind of aptitude. Likewise if they have easy access to books, extra study resources, a quiet space for study, no family distractions or challenges, and so on.
Poor people typically have none of those extra resources. Some poor people with extreme talent will be able to overcome the challenges of relative poverty, but others with equal talent won't.
It's extremely hard to create a true meritocratic system, and Gaokao certainly isn't it.
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So wouldn't it then be fairest to punish kids with high income or high wealth parents? Say set median household income. If parents make double this the score is automatically halved. If they make half it is doubled. Same on gross wealth. More wealth there is bigger the cut.
This would mean that says Musk's kids would need to get sufficiently higher scores than children of someone with no wealth.
It’s still meritocratic in the sense of picking the people most capable of performing well in a higher academic setting.
It’s unfair. But nonetheless true that students who were better able to prepare due to superior resources are nonetheless better prepared.