IT'S known as the 'gao kao', or high test.

The Chinese test is like the American SAT in some ways, except that it lasts more than twice aslong.

The nine-hour test is offered just once a year and is the sole determinant for admission to virtually all Chinese colleges and universities, the International Herald Tribune reported. About three in five students make the cut.

Families pull out all the stops to ensure that their children do well.

In Sichuan province in southwestern China, students studied in a hospital, hooked up to oxygencontainers, in hopes of improving their concentration.

Some girls take contraceptives so they will not get their periods during the exam. Some well-off parents dangle the promise of fabulous rewards for children whose scores get them into a top-ranked university: Parties, 100,000 yuan ($21,000) in cash, or better.

Cheating is becoming sophisticated. It includes giving children tiny earpieces. The parents then persuade the teacher to fax them the questions and the answers are then transmitted by handphone.

In all, 2,645 cheaters were caught last year.

Critics feel that the test exposes a flaw in the education system. They say that it encourages memorising chapters rather than independent thinking.

But it has not in any way diluted the national obsession.

This year, five million more students signed up for the test than did so in 2002.

China now has more than 1,900 institutions of higher learning, nearly double the number in 2000. Close to 19 million students are enrolled, a sixfold jump in one decade.

Some students who find it tough to make it on their own enrol in a military-style boarding school in Tianjin, devoting themselves exclusively to test preparation.

The annual school fee is 38,500 yuan - well above the average annual income for a Chinese family.

Liu Qichao, 19, is one such student. He enrolled himself in the school after he scored just 432 points out of 750, too low to be admitted even to a second-tier institution.

Hours after he finished the test on Monday, MrLiu calculated that his score leaped by more than 100 points over last year's dismal performance.

But he was still downcast, uncertain whether hewould make the cut-off to apply to top-tier universities. The mark can vary by an applicant's place of residence and ethnicity.

This article was first published in The New Paper.