A calm revision rhythm for the gaokao
Short answer
Keep a steady gaokao rhythm: one hard subject in the morning, mixed papers in the afternoon, light review in the evening, and one rest half-day each week. Confirm the date and the subject list with your school and your provincial education authority. A practice percentage is a log of that paper, not a prediction of a score line.
The gaokao is a long national exam, and a long exam rewards a day you can repeat. This guide is a revision rhythm for that day: the hardest subject in the morning, mixed papers in the afternoon, a light review in the evening, and one rest half-day each week. It is study craft. Dates, subject lists, and score lines stay with your school and your provincial education authority.
You can use the rhythm in any season. Run it as a four-week block, then repeat it. When your school posts the sitting you will take, copy those dates into the <a href="/exam-calendar/">exam calendar</a> and keep the same shape of day. Other exam rhythms on the hub, including the <a href="/blog/japan-common-test-study-plan/">Japan Common Test study plan</a> and the <a href="/blog/brazil-enem-study-blocks/">ENEM study blocks</a>, use the same idea of a repeatable week. The papers differ. The habit of a steady day travels.
What the exam is
The gaokao, short for the National College Entrance Examination, is the main written route into undergraduate study in China. It is usually held in early June. The sitting often runs across more than one day. How many days, which sessions fall in the morning, and which subjects you sit are provincial facts. Treat any weekday you remember from an older sitting as a memory, and wait for the notice that names your own.
The usual core and the provincial layer
Chinese, mathematics, and a foreign language are the usual core. The foreign language is often English, and in many provinces it is not the only option. Beyond the core, provinces set their own menu. Some students follow a combination built around a preferred subject plus electives. Some sit papers that are set nationally, and some sit papers set inside the province. Your registration, not a national rumour, decides the list.
What this guide will not guess
This guide will not name the weekday of your sitting. It will not tell you that your province uses the same papers as another province. It will not estimate a score line, a rank inside your province, or the mark that a university might ask for. Those numbers are published by the authorities after the exam, and they move. A calm plan does not need a guessed line in order to start.
If you ask a tool to compress a chapter, use it as a first pass and then check every line. The page on <a href="/blog/how-to-ask-an-ai-for-a-study-summary/">how to ask an AI for a study summary</a> shows a careful way to do that. The summary is a draft. Your textbook, your notes, and your teacher's corrections are the check.
A four-week shape
Four weeks is long enough to see a pattern and short enough to finish. You can run the shape more than once before the sitting. Label the weeks in a notebook. Keep the rest half-day in every week, including week four.
Week one: find the hard morning
Week two: one weakness, then a mix
Week three: longer papers, same evenings
On three afternoons, sit a longer mixed paper. Use a length your teacher recommends for a session, rather than a length you hope will impress you. Keep the morning on the weak subject, and rotate in the second-weakest subject on two mornings so it does not go cold. The evening stays light. A long afternoon plus a long evening is how students lose the next morning.
Week four: redo, then close new chapters
Stop opening new chapters. Redo items you missed twice. Sit one mixed paper under the same start time you expect on exam morning, and check that time against the <a href="/world-clock/">world clock</a> if you are away from home. Use the rest half-day fully. Pack the stationery your school listed. Read the latest school notice once, slowly, and write any change into the front of the notebook.
Weekly plan
The week is the part you actually live. Keep it boring on purpose. A boring plan is easy to start on a tired Thursday.
Morning, afternoon, evening
Use the afternoon for mixed papers. A mixed paper can be a full past paper your teacher issued, or a home-made mix: twenty minutes of Chinese reading and twenty minutes of foreign-language items under one timer. The point is that your attention has to switch, because the real days switch. Mark the mix before dinner if you can. Marking while you still remember your reasoning is kinder than marking at night.
Keep the evening light. Three to five error notes, a glance at tomorrow's morning topic, and then the books close. Light means you could explain the errors to a parent in a few sentences and still have energy left. If the evening starts to grow a new chapter, you have left the plan.
One rest half-day
A sample week
Monday and Tuesday keep the hard subject in the morning and a two-subject mix in the afternoon. If Wednesday afternoon is your rest half-day, leave it empty. Thursday and Friday return to the same shape. Use Sunday morning for one timed section and the weekly log: three percentages, three error types, and the subject that will own Monday.
If a school test lands on Thursday, Thursday afternoon becomes that test, and the mixed paper moves to Friday. You do not add Friday evening to "catch up". You move a block. You do not stack two days into one.
How to mark a practice paper
Mark with the key your teacher gave you or with the key printed on a past paper the school has cleared. Count the items right. Count the items on the paper. Divide, and multiply by one hundred. The <a href="/percentage-calculator/">percentage calculator</a> does the arithmetic so you can spend your care on the errors.
Write the percentage for the whole paper and a percentage for each part you can separate: reading, language knowledge, a mathematics section, an elective. A strong part can hide a weak one if you only keep the total. The weak part is a candidate for the next morning.
A percentage is a record of that paper. It becomes interesting when the next paper is similar in length and in the topics it covers. A higher number on a very short quiz and a lower number on a full paper are not a story of decline. Note the length beside the percentage so you do not tell yourself a false story.
If your provincial guide gives different weights to different papers, follow those weights and read <a href="/blog/how-to-calculate-weighted-average/">how to calculate a weighted average</a>. If you do not have official weights, keep simple percentages. Do not invent a weight because a forum post sounded precise.
How to rest
Rest is a scheduled part of revision, with a start and a stop. The rest half-day has a start time you can point to. Before it, you finish the morning block or the school day. After it starts, you do not carry a paper "just to look at". Looking becomes marking, and marking becomes a new evening.
Mistakes that cost a week
Studying only the subject you already like will make the log look kind and the exam feel narrow. The morning exists so the hard subject gets your best hour. If Chinese is calm and mathematics is not, a week of extra essays is a week that avoided the work.
Opening a new chapter at night breaks the evening. New material needs a fresh head and a second look the next day. At night you will recognise the page and mistake recognition for learning. Save the new page for the morning.
Treating a percentage as a score line will make you chase a number the province has not published. Put the percentage in the log. Leave the line to the authority that prints it after the exam.
Skipping the rest half-day feels serious and usually costs the next two mornings. A tired Thursday mix produces messy errors, and messy errors produce a false picture of what you know. Keep the half-day. Move a paper if you must. Do not delete rest to look busy.
What to confirm on the official site
Before you trust the plan with a date, confirm these items on the provincial notice and with your school.
Confirm the timetable for your cohort, including which sessions are morning sessions. Confirm the subject list on your registration, the foreign language, and the electives. Confirm which papers are nationally set and which are local. Confirm what you may bring, what you must leave outside, and which identification or admission document you need. Confirm the venue and how early you are expected. Confirm any listening or speaking arrangement your province uses.
The National Education Examinations Authority site is the national reference. Your provincial education authority is the local one. Your school is the last step, because the school knows the room. If a message forwarded in a chat conflicts with the notice, follow the notice and ask a teacher to look at the message with you. The hub's <a href="/exams/">exams</a> pages and <a href="/blog/topic/exams/">exam guides</a> are study craft beside those notices.
When the date is real, add it to the <a href="/exam-calendar/">exam calendar</a> and adjust week four so the final days match the sessions you will sit. Until that notice exists, leave the date blank. A blank is more honest than a weekday you invented from memory.
This week on paper
Write one page for the week in front of you.
Name the morning subject, and name the topic inside it. Name the three afternoons that will hold a mixed set, and name the two subjects in each set. Name the rest half-day and the clock time it starts. Write the evening rule in one line: error notes only, then stop. Leave a blank row for the official date.
After the first mixed set, record a percentage with the <a href="/percentage-calculator/">percentage calculator</a> and one error type. After the rest half-day, do not "make up" a paper. On the last evening of the week, choose next week's morning subject from the log, not from your mood.
That is the whole rhythm. Hard morning, mixed afternoon, light evening, one half-day of rest, and a date you copy only when the province and your school have published it.
Frequently asked questions
When is the gaokao usually held?
The gaokao is usually held in early June. The weekday and the length of the sitting depend on the year and on the province. This guide does not name a date for the coming sitting. Write the date into your plan only after your school or your provincial education authority publishes the timetable for your cohort.
Do all provinces use the same papers?
Provinces do not all use the same papers or the same subject menu. Some use nationally set papers and some set their own. Your school and your provincial education authority publish the list that applies to you. Follow that list, including the foreign language and the elective subjects on your registration.
How should I split the day?
Give the morning to the subject you find hardest that day. Use the afternoon for a mixed paper or a mixed set of short questions. Keep the evening for a light pass over errors only. Protect one half-day each week with no new paper and no new chapter.
Can a practice percentage predict my score line?
A practice percentage tells you how many items you got right on that paper. It belongs in a log so you can see which section needs the next morning. It does not forecast a provincial score line. Score lines are published by the authorities after the exam, and this guide does not estimate them.
What should I check on the official site?
Confirm the timetable, the subject list, the stationery rules, and the venue instructions on the notice from your provincial education authority and from your school. Also confirm which papers are nationally set and which are local. If a chat group and the official notice disagree, follow the notice.
