BEIJING - From hiring ghostwriters and forging sports credentials to generous 'gift-giving', admissions middlemen in China are advising wealthy parents to take an array of 'shortcuts' to secure places at foreign universities.
"In the admissions world, it's called gift-giving instead of bribing. About US$10,000 is on the lower end of the spectrum. An average gift will be about US$250,000," one former college counsellor revealed, on condition of anonymity. It has been an 18-month process so far during which she has also taken the SAT exam, a standardised test to enter US colleges four times - so she was certain she would get the score she needed.
Chinese students wanting to study abroad take a risk by skipping the gaokao, the country's notoriously difficult college entrance test, which is the only route to Chinese universities. This gives them time to prepare for a completely different set of standardised tests. The country's foreign college admission services industry is expected to grow to US$35 billion by 2021 from US$28 billion in 2017, according to a February report by the state-backed Chinese Students and Scholars Association.
China is the biggest source of international university students in Britain and applications have jumped 30 per cent in the past year.