4. Top scorers

Liu Zhixin, Beijing's top gaokao scorer in science, goes to Peking University for registration on Sept 5, 2015.[Photo/VCG]

How many students take the first spots, also known as zhuangyuan, in gaokao? And what do they do after?

Thankfully, an annual report has answered those questions by tracking down top-scorers over the past decades.

It seems Peking University is the college-of-choice among the most gifted students – 835, to be exact – while economics is the most popular subject.  

A total of 835 top-scorers at the provincial-level in the country's national college entrance examination, or gaokao, became Peking University students between 1977 and 2015, a recently published report by a consultancy company showed.

The report, by consultancy company cuaa.net, looks at top-scorers from across the country in the past few decades, before this year's gaokao is sat between June 7 and 9.

Tsinghua University, another top university, followed Peking University to receive 668 top scorers. Fudan University enrolled 55 to rank third, while the University of Science and Technology of China received 54.

The economics major has been the most popular among top scorers, attracting 343 students, followed by business administration and electronic information engineering.