Only about 1,000 students out of over 6,000 who took a self-selection examination got the chance of an interview for Tsinghua University, the Beijing Daily reported on Monday.

Students walk out of an examination site in Nanjing, capital city of east China's Jiangsu province, on February 19, 2011. More than 60,000 students from across the country sat for the self-enrollment exam held by Tsinghua University and six other top universities in China. [Photo: yangtse.com]

Seven prestigious universities in China, including Tsinghua University, released results of the written examination for independent enrollment on Saturday. These universities decided to use the same independent exam, besides the national one, to test students hoping to gain entrance there.

Tsinghua is the first one to announce its schedule for the second round of selection, which is composed of three parts, namely a special written examination, interview and a physical fitness test on March 11 and 12.

Students, who have good performances at the interview and test, will get a maximum of 60 extra points in college entrance exam results, said the report.

China is making efforts to reform its system of college entrance exams by encouraging universities to select students based on independent criteria rather than just using the results of the national one.

Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xi'an Jiaotong University and Nanjing University formed China's first alliance of independent enrollment examinations in 2010.

The alliance helps to lighten the students' load, since students who want entrance to any of the five universities will only have to sit at one independent exam instead of taking several exams for different universities.

Another alliance of the same kind was built later in the same year, including Peking University, Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Beijing Normal University, Nankai University, Fudan University, Xiamen University and Hong Kong University.

This year, the two alliances of self-enrollment have been respectively expanded from five to seven and seven to thirteen.

Following the deed of Tsinghua University and its allies, the alliance led by Peking University soon released the results of written examinations on Sunday.

According to a previous report by Xinhua News Agency, both alliances opposed aggressive competition. Chinese universities should not compete with each other but rather compete with foreign world-class universities in student enrollment, because nowadays more excellent high-school students in China are inclined to choose overseas colleges and universities, said the report.