And a side note from me as a Pole - online I see many Americans speaking about how cruel Gaokao is, but... It's America that's outlier. I had the same style of exam in Poland to get to uni, and it's the same in the entire EU, and rest of the world. So I have no idea why Gaokao is singled out.

The US has plenty of exams, starting in early primary school. All states have Standards of Learning (SOL) exams every few years on the main subjects. Then, starting in high school, you have a combination of Advanced Placement (AP) subject exams (college level, often granting college credit) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exams, Scholastic Aptitude (SAT) or American College Test (ACT), SAT2 subject exams, and probably a few I've forgotten.

The SAT or ACT are technically the only ones "required" for college, but most of the elite schools expect AP or IB (which tends to give the students a year or two of calculus, a fourth year of foreign language, and some deeper dives into other sciences or social studies).

But, because it's split across so many tests, there's no single "score poorly and your life is ruined" exam.

We have the SAT and ACT, and those are objective. The wealthy still pass disproportionately due to better tutoring specifically oriented to those tests. It’s Goodhart’s law.

I am currently living in Japan, and it seems that they follow the American style exams. I don't know if it is a result of the post-war occupation, or it was already like that before WW2.

Back home in Spain we follow the same style of a single national-level exam that you mentioned though.

Everyone has a tendency to support the system they went through. I've done it numerous times for standardized tests and I went through them. I think the information value of a person who was certified capable by system X recommending system X is probably low.

After all, if you flipped the script and the US used standardized tests and you were then told that China uses a committee of experts that will certify incoming applicants' stated political positions, race, and cultural background in order to "craft a class" (as an admissions officer calls it in SAT Wars) with a carve-out for the children of those who have already attended, you would be informed of the need for meritocracy, the tendency towards nepotism, and the obvious racial biases that will affect individuals in such a system.

Likewise, you would doubtless be informed that the East's more holistic look at the total student is a superior form of student selection since it is driven by a Confucian focus on the gestalt human rather than on the reductive metrics of the West.

What is interesting to me is to hear from those who have succeeded in some system but nonetheless wish it were different.

I don't know how this exam is in China and Poland, but from what I've seen about the south Korean one it is much harsher on the students than the french one, even in my time

Your single exam performance doesn't forever assign you to a class of people, you still have an opportunity to redo the exam next year or to be successful even without a degree. That's not possible in China nor Korea. Even in Germany flunking a class might ban you from ever retaking it at any other German university.

>and it's the same in the entire EU

That's not true.

Its basically anything that sticks by saying "China Bad, USA Good".

Because they want to say that China is bad. When, as you say, US is the outlier in inventing strange ways to admit kids to college. I'm from Brazil and the entrance is exam is similar to China, there is a single exam and the note is used to determine which college you can go.