Not Only the Score: A Promoter-Based Merit Negotiation in Elite College Admission Battle

For ambitious young Chinese students, gaining admission to an exclusive group of universities is a critical step toward entering elite spheres of Chinese society. Educators and policymakers often explain admissions and school choices through asocial concepts of meritocracy like gaokao-score-based tournaments and rational choice explanations. Organizational scholars emphasize cultural matching as an interpersonal recruitment mechanism. However, both frameworks fail to explain how standardized testing and cultural processes work together, albeit at different analytical levels. This article addresses this limitation by offering the first systematic analysis of the high-stakes admission competition between China's top two universities, Peking and Tsinghua. Based on participant observation of university recruiters (promoters) in Mango Province during the annual post-gaokao enrollment period, this study examines how merit is negotiated on the ground. I find that numbers game is prioritized at the institution and student levels, while cultural matching emerges at the promoter level. Universities focus on securing top-1 students (zhuangyuan) and boosting reported admission cutoffs. Students often cannot meaningfully distinguish between the two institutions. This allows promoters to "guide" students to their institutions by mediating between student decision-making and institutional goals. They accomplish this work by using three distinct practices. First, as institutional agents, they deploy emotional appeals to evaluate and promote a sense of "fit." Second, as peer-like figures, they guide students to internalize dominant judgments of the "small-town swot," leading them to reinterpret their own success as mechanical, narrow, or lacking in elite polish. Third, by calling themselves "volunteers," they blur the boundary between institutional authority and personal goodwill, masking their strategic role in the admissions process. This article contributes to theories of merit under egalitarian governance, by showing how critical decision-making junctures actively construct meritocracy and the social meaning of elite status in the world.