Author Octopus.
Edited by Yan Ruyi.
In the past weekend, "postgraduate entrance examination" occupied half of the hot search list.
Although there are data showing that the number of applicants for the postgraduate entrance examination in 2024 is 360,000 less than the previous year.
However, in 2024, the number of applicants for the national master's examination will be 4.38 million, and the number of college graduates in the country is expected to be 11.79 million, accounting for more than 1.3 graduates.
Postgraduate entrance examination is still one of the "just-in-demand" choices faced by graduates.
The college students who can't move the roll are still lying flat.
On social **, the importance of postgraduate entrance examination has been continuously raised"Second College Entrance Examination".Another name for it.
It even appeared on the Internet"One study is a certainty".said.
Is the impact of the graduate school entrance examination on life really so great?
We talked to a few people who have graduated for many years and talked about their graduate school experience.
Some of them passed the test at the first time, how are they doing now?
There are also people who still fail in a few battles, will they regret it now?
Looking back many years later, what did it really mean to go to graduate school in their lives?
Not everyone clearly understands the purpose of graduate school when they decide to go to graduate school.
More often than not, the graduate school entrance examination is just a choice made under pressure.
Liu Lei chose to go to graduate school "because he didn't know anything about the future."
Approaching graduation, graduate school entrance examination, work, public examination, and examination editing. These choices are all in front of Liu Lei. "If you work, work in **, is it your hometown, the city where the university is located, or a first-tier city?”
When he fell into a difficult choice, Liu Lei was used to letting others make choices for him.
"I'll sign up for the graduate school entrance examination first, and if I can get in, I'll go to it, and if I don't hit it, I'll stop immediately and look for a job. ”
With the mentality of "casual fate", Liu Lei spent the first semester of his senior year safely in the preparation for the exam.
The results were announced, and the list was lost. He felt a sense of relief
At least I've ruled out one wrong option. ”
On the issue of the postgraduate entrance examination, Liu Lei claims to be a bit of a fatalist: "I think, this is a warning from the sky, Mingjin should withdraw his troops." ”
Liu Lei, who accepted that it was providential to fall off the list, quickly packed up his mood and walked from the library to the job fair. A few months later, he found his first job. When he was 31 years old, he looked back at the graduate school entrance examination and decided to say two words with a smile:
Looking back now, it's too normal to fail the test, I didn't really want to take the test at all!”
"If you don't know if you want to go to graduate school, then you don't. ”
Some people regard the graduate school entrance examination as a test of fate, and some people have more realistic expectations for the graduate school entrance examination:
Alleviate employment pressure.
According to the "2022 National Graduate Enrollment Survey Report" released by China Education**:
Nearly 60% of the candidates chose to take the postgraduate examination because "too much employment pressure" and hoped to "enhance their employment competitiveness" through the postgraduate examination.
Zhang Lin is one of them.
When she was in high school, she and her family tacitly believed that they must be admitted to graduate school after graduating from college. Zhang Lin doesn't remember how this consensus was reached, and she hasn't heard her parents say that the graduate school entrance examination has any specific benefits for her life.
Anyway, I simply think that reading more books will always help in the future."
Looking back at the decision to go to graduate school after graduating from graduate school, Zhang Lin's mood is a little complicated.
"I didn't think about it that much at the time, but now I look at it:
The most direct motivation or the biggest benefit of the graduate school entrance examination is to avoid the pressure of employment.
Approaching graduation, students who failed the graduate school entrance examination kept participating in various job fairs because they missed the school recruitment in the fall. Sometimes, Zhang Lin sat on the bed after dinner and took a shower, and her roommate who went to the city to find a job was still on the way back to school on the last train.
Because they majored in food quality and safety, Zhang Lin's classmates had limited choices after graduation, and the job of the corresponding major was "basically to go to a food factory".
And the factory means closed management, away from the city, and unsightly workwear.
When the students were frustrated with their work, Zhang Lin enjoyed the campus life very calmly, and because of the success of the postgraduate entrance examination, she took a small amount of money rewarded by her parents to travel to the Pearl River Delta.
Although she was successful in the postgraduate entrance examination, Zhang Lin's job search after graduating from graduate school was not easy at all.
Her graduate major was food safety, which is still only the counterpart of the factory. Three years ago, the dilemma faced by undergraduate students was put in front of Zhang Lin as it was.
In the spring of 2018, when graduation was approaching, Zhang Lin only had 3 offers in his hand:
One is to go to a food factory to develop soy sauce;
One is to go to a chain restaurant as a management trainee, starting from serving plates;
There is also a cosmetics counter sister in a shopping mall who relies on a good image to apply.
However, the status of a master's degree graduate of 211 college made Zhang Lin and her family unable to accept the jobs and salaries offered by factories, restaurants, and shopping malls.
At that time, Zhang Lin realized in hindsight:
It is true that the postgraduate entrance examination can postpone the employment pressure, but it cannot make the employment pressure disappear.
It was more of an excuse for procrastination, and I was reassuring myself that I had not done nothing for the past 3 years, and at least I had obtained a graduate diploma. ”
Speaking of this, Zhang Lin sighed: "When I was looking for a job, I found out that the role of graduate study was exaggerated. ”
Zhang Lin is not the only graduate student who found that he had difficulty finding employment when he was about to graduate.
According to the data released by Shanghai Ocean University, the employment rate of graduate students in colleges and universities in Shanghai in 2023 is only 4066%。
That is, even in Shanghai,More than half of graduate students are still unemployed.
The employment situation in 2018 is not as cruel as this year, and after several rounds, Zhang Lin found a job as an academic journal editor with a monthly salary of 8,000 yuan in Beijing. A year later, she was fed up with spending 3,000 a month to share a house with people, and she was fed up with the complicated office politics and decided to quit naked.
When I looked at the bank card, the balance was less than 20,000. ”
After resigning, Zhang Lin returned to her hometown to prepare for the civil service exam and became a full-time child. In Zhang Lin's opinion"The situation of the public examination is also becoming more and more severe year by year. ”
In 2024, the ratio of the number of people who have passed the examination to the number of recruitment plans is about 77:1. When Zhang Lin took the national examination in 2020, the enrollment ratio was still 595：1。
However, in four years, there are an average of 17 more competitors for each position.
Fortunately, at the end of 2020, Zhang Lin got the establishment of a public institution in Tianjin. Thankfully, she is:
"Graduate degree is required when taking the exam".
"It's kind of using this degree to get a job."
Not only Zhang Lin, but most of her graduate students will take the exam after graduation.
"There are also some of them who have gone straight to PhDs. However, the final destination of doctoral studies is still the examination and editing."
Zhang Lin has a senior brother who was very slack when he was in graduate school, and he didn't go to the laboratory until almost 11 o'clock in the morning, and he could delay doing experiments.
He just wanted to graduate and earn money as soon as possible. After working, I found it difficult to earn money, and the salary was not as much as begging, so I went to study for a doctorate."
Now, his goal is to stay at university.
Not only graduate students want to take the exam, but the positions in the national examination are also more inclined to highly educated talents.
In the 2024 national examination, under the overall expansion of enrollment, the number of positions starting from a college degree has decreased by 106 compared with last year.
The number of positions requiring a master's degree or above increased by 814 compared with last year, with a total increase of 1,654 people.
Although I have heard a lot of sayings that "graduate students have a higher chance of being promoted, and the salary is not the same as that of undergraduates", in Zhang Lin's opinion, this is not the case. According to her observations, the career development paths of people who enter the system at the age of age are completely different from those who are only admitted at the age of age:
"You (graduate student) have just entered and have not yet recognized all of them, and your peers who have gone ashore as an undergraduate may have been promoted several times. ”
Regardless of whether it is inside or outside the system, 2-3 years of work experience can smooth out the development gap brought about by academic qualifications.
Li Yingsheng was born in a highly educated family, and her brothers and sisters of the same age started with a master's degree per person.
The failure of the graduate school entrance examination was completely unexpected by Li Ying. Because of blind confidence that she would definitely be able to get in, Li Ying didn't make any plans for finding a job at all.
After the results of the graduate school entrance examination were announced, she had to apply for a job while writing her graduation, and finally found a good new ** editor job in June 2018.
In 2022, Li Ying was hired by a unit in Shenzhen as the new editor-in-chief.
When the team was hiring, she found a large number of resumes of master's degree graduates from Tsinghua University and Fudan University, who were just applying for a job as a journalist. At that time, she looked at the resume in the mailbox and broke out in a cold sweat
"If I had succeeded in the graduate school entrance examination that year and graduated this year, I might have submitted my resume here. ”
In the past 10 years from 2011 to 2019, the number of college graduates has increased by 1.74 million.
In 2022, the number of graduates will increase by 1.67 million, and the number of fresh graduates will reach 10.76 million.
On the one hand, the number of graduates has surged, and on the other hand, there has been a decline in social recruitment positions.
According to the 2022 Employment Trends Data Report, corporate hiring is generally conservative, and the scale of hiring has shrunk compared to 2021.
In Li Ying's view, the failure of the graduate school entrance examination in the past is like a gift of fate:
Work experience is much more cost-effective than a graduate degree.
The job-hunting pressure faced by 2018 and 2022 graduates cannot be smoothed out by a graduate diploma. ”
Li Ying is extremely glad that she failed in the graduate school entrance examination that year, "otherwise I would have graduated from graduate school in 2022 and would definitely not be able to find a job."
What's more, compared with Li Ying's monthly salary, the salary of fresh graduates in 2022 "will be discounted by more than 5%".
On the day of the end of the postgraduate entrance examination, I searched for the keyword "postgraduate entrance examination" on the Internet, and the content of the related posts was all "mentality collapsed".
Famous teachers for postgraduate entrance examinations begin to pay attention to the psychological state of candidates one month before the examination. I advise everyone to take it easy:
Persistence is victory. ”
As long as you don't give up the test, you can outperform most of your competitors. ”
According to the "2022 Survey Report on the Mental Health Status of College Students" jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutions:
There are 5044% of college students intend to go to graduate school. Their risk of anxiety was significantly higher than that of students who did not intend to go to graduate school.
Anxiety seems to have become a problem that graduate students must face. When we put this anxiety in front of people who have been out of graduate school for many years, ask them:
"Do you still take the test again?”
Surprisingly, everyone's answer is basically the same: yes.
Although Zhang Lin went ashore with a graduate degree, she has always felt that it is difficult for her to have a deep understanding of society by going to graduate school too early.
After graduating from graduate school, Zhang Lin felt that "he was old and the cost of trial and error was high", and he couldn't try a lot of work like he did after graduating from undergraduate, and he lost a lot of possibilities.
If she had to do it again, she would like to work first and then go to graduate school.
Get a feel for the workplace, see what you can do, and what you want to do. If further study helps me to advance my career, then go to graduate school."
In 2018, Shen Yue, who studied international economics with a bachelor's degree, graduated.
She wanted to write more than to do economics-related work. In order to achieve this goal, Shen Yue took the examination for 2 years without hesitation.
Unfortunately, I didn't get ashore twice.
Shen Yue felt that "the sky had fallen".
For small-town problem-solvers, the only way in life is to study, study, study, take exams, and take exams."
Failed the graduate school entrance examination, smack!The path dependence that I have been relying on for survival is broken!”
Shen Yue felt like a derailed train: "I failed the graduate school entrance examination, and I have no title to do in the small town, and I don't know where to go." ”
She also wanted to take the test again, so she went to Douban and asked netizens, "If you failed in World War II, do you want to fight World War III?"”
Almost 99% of people told Shen Yue: Hurry up and work.
After stopping the postgraduate entrance examination, Shen Yue, who considered himself a "small-town problem-solver", opened all the way in the workplace.
Not only did I find a job as the chief writer in **, but I was also promoted one after another. In the fourth year of work, he has become a well-known deputy director of content.
Referring to the impact of failing the graduate exam on himself, Shen Yue smiled:
No impact at all. In addition to affecting the mood, it lowers the ...... self-evaluation”
2 exams and 2 defeats, but Shen Yue, who is like a fish in water in the workplace, does not regret his decision to take the postgraduate examination:
"If you don't take the exam once, how do you know that graduate school is not worth it.
When he graduated from his bachelor's degree, Wang Lin, a native of Shandong, was a "retrograde" among his classmates. His college classmates were either admitted to graduate school or edited for the exam, but he wanted to be independent as soon as possible and firmly chose to work in Beijing.
After 10 years of working in society, most of the former classmates have embarked on the road of work and entered a critical period in the workplace. Wang Lin secretly prepared for the application of overseas graduate students.
After graduating with a bachelor's degree, Wang Lin joined an Internet company. 10 years later, in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, the company "had to lay off employees every six months".
Although Wang Lin's name is not yet on the list of layoffs, he still decided to change tracks and move towards the next goal by studying in graduate school.
When we were in our early 20s, we were more or less worried about whether we could have a graduate degree.
But after people reach 30, when they look back at themselves back then, everyone finds that:
The important thing may not be academic qualifications, but experiences.
After graduating from graduate school, Zhang Lin, who was successful in the graduate school entrance examination, doubted the value of graduate school countless times, but in the end, she was qualified to take the exam
Shen Yue and Liu Lei, who failed to take the postgraduate entrance examination, encountered many workplace setbacks after graduating from undergraduate, but finally found a suitable position for themselves and gave beautiful results;
Wang Lin, who is still a firm "non-researcher" as an undergraduate, began to prepare for studying abroad after working for 10 years, hoping to start the second spring of his career through a graduate degree.
In their stories, graduate school and graduate school are only a short-lived experience, and they cannot have a decisive impact on their lives at all.
What can really determine life is the self who constantly copes with unexpected situations.
When discussing this topic in the editorial department, my colleague Wang Dong said something very appropriate:
"There are many intersections in life, some of which are more critical, but the graduate school entrance examination belongs to the kind of person who turns to the side to go to the toilet. ”
Whether it is the "second college entrance examination" or "one research is determined", it is just the "meaning" that people give to the postgraduate entrance examination under high pressure, and its actual energy is not so huge.
Taking the postgraduate entrance examination as a non-disobedient fate, going ashore is a success, and losing the election is a failure, but in fact, you look down on yourself. Just look up at the specific individuals around you who are trying to move forward, and you can clearly understand:
Individuals are not at all the target of "fate" to fall with one blow.
The postgraduate entrance examination is not even a part of fate.
It's just a choice, it's up to you to decide whether to choose or not, when to choose.
All names in this article have been changed.