Jiang Fangzhou has ink in her veins. She published her first book at 9, and was elected chairwoman of China's Youth Writers Association at middle school. Now she has scaled even more dizzy heights by being admitted to the prestigious Tsinghua University. But here's the thing. The university lowered the qualifying criterion for her national college entrance exam, allowing Jiang to score 60 points less than the minimum requirements.

There were mixed reactions to Tsinghua's decision in this case. In a survey concerning Tsinghua's motivation to admit Jiang conducted by portal website sohu.com, 48,770 among the 70,000 total respondents answered that Tsinghua's independent enrollment initiative lives up to its name as a liberal first-class university, while another 19,278 said that it is unfair to other students that took the exam.

Jiang's example shows that a test-based enrollment system is not the sole mechanism to assess a student's overall performance at school, and more gifted students specializing in certain subjects will be given an opportunity to enter top-notch universities through this newly launched channel. Meanwhile, those against this method said that the most controversial reason for Jiang's enrollment is attributable to her high additional scores but unsatisfactory performance during the exam. In addition, the national college entrance exam is so authoritative that it has long been perceived as the only access for students to enter higher education. They say the independent enrollment system is unfair as it takes up quotas of other examinees that scored above the baseline.

Jiang argued on her blog that she was no different from others in the procedure, which goes through application, initial appraisal, rounds of tests and interviews. "Tsinghua's minimum scoreline for admission is comparatively much higher than the national average, and that's the reason why I opted to apply for the independent enrollment," she said.

Meng Qian, chief of Tsinghua's enrollment office, said that talented students like Jiang have no enrollment privileges, but merely undergo a slight difference in the procedure. First of all, Jiang's graduating school offered Tsinghua a briefing, which contains the certification to prove her special talents or extraordinary capacity, and then Tsinghua organized a six-member expert panel to interview her. After this, Jiang passed the written tests implemented by the specialist panel to get her 60 supplementary points for the national exam.

Netizens said that Tsinghua's independent initiative is positive in catering for students with special talents. But Jiang's individual case should not become a shortcut for average students. At least the national college