What University Majors are Popular in China This Year?

For contemporary Chinese, the college entrance examination may be one of the most important things in life.

In addition to the academic achievement itself, the college entrance examination is also a choice game. Chinese universities recruit students according to provincial rankings, not national rankings. In addition, the admission scores of different majors in the same school are also very different.

Therefore, on the eve of the annual college entrance examination, students and their parents begin to browse, study and discuss how to apply for the college entrance examination online.

On July 29, 2020, Tencent, China’s largest social networking company, released a report on the trend of the college entrance examination. The report, based on anonymous data from Tencent’s browser and News App, shows the popularity among different provinces, universities, and majors.

Judging from the heat curve, the online popularity related to the college entrance examination in 2020 has experienced twists and turns, with a total of four peaks:

• On Feb. 28, the penultimate day of the planned college entrance examination, China’s Ministry of Education issued a signal that the college entrance examination may be postponed.
• On March 31, the Ministry of Education announced that the college entrance examination was postponed for one month.
• June 7, the original date of the college entrance examination.
• The actual date of this year’s college entrance examination and the follow-up application period since July 7.

Among the hot words related to the college entrance examination, the top 10 are college entrance examination, college entrance examination answers, popular majors, university ranking, college entrance examination schedule, the publication of college entrance examination composition questions, college entrance examination composition, 2020 college entrance examination, replacement of examination papers in Shexian County, and the announcement of college entrance examination answers.

China’s university rankings are a hot topic in the annual admissions season, although there is no fair answer according to employment and academic standards. But ranked by the popularity of the Internet, the top 10 universities with the highest public attention this year are Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Shandong University, Civil Aviation University of China, Sun Yat-sen University, Hainan University, Xiamen University and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

In terms of major selection, the majors that Chinese students are most concerned about this year are Software Engineering, Electronic Information Engineering, Chinese Language and Literature, English, Electronic Engineering and Automation, Law, Mechanical Manufacturing and Automation, Financial Management, Computational Science and Technology, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics.

It is worth noting that the Chinese language and literature are not a popular major in previous years, and the graduates of this major are not very good in employment prospects. As a result, the major was welcomed by students in the college entrance examination in 2020, probably due to the influence of the “archaic” trend among Chinese young people in the past two years.

In addition, the report also shows that candidates in different provinces have different preferences for universities and majors, with people in Henan, Shandong and Anhui provinces paying more attention to the graduation salary of university majors. on the other hand, candidates in Shanghai, Qinghai, and Tibet pay less attention to university graduation salary.

For candidates living in economically developed coastal provinces (Shanghai, Hubei, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangsu), they searched more for economics-related majors. In Shanghai, the popularity of financial management is higher than that of English, occupying the third place.

In the past, Chinese candidates and parents’ research on different majors was limited to local areas. But with the popularity of mobile Internet in China, they are getting more and more supporting materials and decision-making tools. It also makes it possible for more people to make choices that suit them instead of blindly following the masses.