Which subject goes in each of those categories depends on the major you're applying for, so you have to decide what you'll want to study in university at age ~17 (or prior to that, really, when you're 15 in High School so you can focus your studies on the harder questions). For instance, if you want to go to Med School (which is an undergrad course in Brazil), you need to know all things Biology, from Nemathelminthes to the Krebs Cycle. Conversely, if you want to go Law School (also undergrad) or major in History, you'll need to know everything that happened between Plato and Gorbachev including really in-depth stuff on Brazilian history. The problem is, all of the High School classes are the same regardless of your intended exam – you have to learn all of the above for school along with everyone else.
And you get to take the same exam for each university you apply to, meaning you basically spend a year taking exams at various dates for all the good universities. Each major has X number of spots available to candidates, to the top X scores get in. Your extracurriculars, who you are as a person, anything on your resume is irrelevant. All that matters is your score.
Want to switch majors? Gotta drop out, take the exam again and restart your university life.
The SAT by comparison is an absolute joke of an exam
Damn.
Sounds absolutely brutal. That said, I was caught with the quoted paragraph. Why should your extracurricular hobbies or "you as a person" matter? As far as I see, all that should be considered in university admissions is indeed your test scores.
They certainly do at elite US schools. The logic is that there's no shortage of students who could handle the academic work but Harvard or even MIT aren't looking just to admit the students who did best on an exam.
Added: The way it at least used to be done (and I assume this still applies at least somewhat) was that quantitative academic scores are used to set something of a floor but, beyond that, they were just one of the factors that went into admissions decisions. (With weights and other considerations doubtless varying by school.)
They become very interested in questions like "does this person have volunteer experience that might have exposed them to a worldview larger than themselves?", "do they have a sport or hobby they enjoy which might provide them a boon in mental health?", "have they done anything which would require practical application of skills or collaboration beyond raw book learning?"
The same kind of thing comes up in job interviews all the time. As a hiring manager, I'm of course most interested in whether the candidate can perform the hard requirements of the job as described. But I'd also like signals about whether you're at risk for burnout, whether you might have empathy for differing points of view, or whether you can think on your feet in non-ideal scenarios or whether you'll crumble if a plan changes or a compromise must be found.
People are complex, and well-roundedness is a worthwhile goal on its own for a complex world. There are relatively few scenarios outside of standardized testing where raw academic or technical ability is the exclusive measure of a person.
I'm not familiar with an academic system like this so I can't really comment if it's giving good outcomes vs. purely academic selection. My country is small enough to have a single top tier university and multiple second level institutions, so I'm ingrained with the idea you should choose the best academic candidates from a limited applicant pool.
College itself is where you get a larger worldview. Requiring people have it already seems like a great way to exclude people trapped by family and financial constraints.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_Cuomo [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Savage [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Watson [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reese_Witherspoon [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Woods
That said, you might be surprised at the number of people who even go to a school like MIT and end up in journalism or something else that isn't obviously related to what you associate the school with.
You see no value to taking a music theory class with a platinum artist in your discussions on song structure? Or maybe the rock star wants to expand his horizons a bit and is also in your Ethics class discussing the effect of Napster on his ability to afford tuition. Or maybe he sits next to you in Econ and wants to use his experience in the music biz as the basis for your group project. etc, etc...
Forget the exam nerds, I'll take the real players every time. YMMV
The "real players" could also visit as guest lecturers on your music theory class, assuming they have good enough merits on the subject.
Each university publishes the grades they will accept at a minimum for each major so you essentially choose your major at 17, or really 15 as mentioned above, because you need certain subjects with an “A” result to enroll at the university.
At uni itself, almost all classes are mandatory for a given major with only one or two chances to take an elective. Failing a class at any point usually means either dropping out completely or being moved to a less prestigious major (e.g. “general science” instead of a CS degree).
It’s definitely stressful.
Over the last generation there has been massive grade inflation back when I left school getting 3A's where very rare
My comment on grading is also pretty objective, imo. Your AP score is 1-5. And the curve is crazy; when I took AP Physics C E&M I would have gotten a 5 whether I scored 60% or 100%. When reported, though, nobody will know what percentage of the points you scored. OTOH gaokao scores are reported in full.