Two nations, two exams, one AI reckoning

This week, while families gathered outside examination halls across China, some in red qipao for luck, 12.9 million students sat for the gaokao, the world’s largest annual standardized test. On the other side of the Pacific, American higher education is moving in the opposite direction. Roughly 90% of ranked four-year US colleges no longer require the SAT or ACT.

Two of the world’s largest education systems are heading in opposite directions on the same question: how do you fairly measure a young mind? Increasingly, artificial intelligence is rewriting the answer.

China has doubled down on the single high-stakes exam. The gaokao remains, in the words of one researcher, a pillar of educational equity and social stability, even as Beijing reframes it from pure exam-based selection toward broader evaluation.

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