The summer holiday, once a time for relaxation and travel, is now a high-pressure period for university students aiming for postgraduate recommendation (baoyan). Student Zhang, overwhelmed by social practice, summer camps, a paper to revise, and project summaries, describes feeling like a spinning top, too busy to even visit home.

This is not an isolated case. Interviews reveal that summer has become a critical phase for students to compete in competitions, social practices, and academic papers, with activities reaching new levels of intensity. Some students juggle multiple contests, operating on just eight hours of sleep over 72 hours. Social media amplifies the pressure, framing summer as a "golden window" to widen the gap, where investment in research and practice translates into resume advantages. This frenzy is fueled by rising baoyan rates, which exceed 30% at many 985 universities and over 60% at some. While this path seems broader for those seeking graduate studies, it raises questions about whether it is truly beneficial. University should be a time for exploring interests and tolerating mistakes, but the blind pursuit of grades and activities may cause students to miss out on growth opportunities. How can they escape this new trap?

Under score inflation, a heavier sense of crisis?

Students emphasize that every step is crucial for baoyan, especially in the first three years, requiring constant vigilance. The "hard foundation" is the GPA ranking. From course selection, students seek strategies to maximize scores, even repeating courses they excel in for a higher GPA. However, this is not the whole story. Reforms at universities like Peking University, Fudan, and East China Normal University, which replaced GPA with a grade system, aimed to ease competition but have instead caused more anxiety.

Fudan economics student Zhou Yunlong notes that while grades have improved, with more students earning A-s instead of B+s, absolute score inflation has lowered rankings. The fight has shifted from "getting an A" to "earning every point within an A." Fudan social work student Chen observes that dynamic scores prevent large gaps but sensitize students to tiny differences. Shanghai University of Finance and Economics student Lin adds that in many top universities, GPA differences are minimal, making competitions, research, and practice the new lifelines, explaining why students are exhausted during summer.

For students on the baoyan borderline, it becomes a zero-sum game. As GPA gaps shrink, anxiety spreads to other areas. Zhou explains that with GPA weight decreasing in policies, comprehensive evaluation (zongce) weight increases, prompting students to "madly" accumulate activities, like advertising students competing in contests and communication students rushing to publish papers, often without understanding why.

Reform makes scores look better but fuels a fixation on numbers

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics professor Cao Dongbo finds this result unsurprising, stating GPA is a tool, not the core issue. Changing granularity without altering the "meritocracy" filter won't change the pursuit of absolute rankings. This misalignment between evaluation reform and admission pathways, with meritocracy dominating, makes the grade system a new anxiety source. Shanghai Jiao Tong University professor Fan Wenbing notes that if the logic of competition involves entire grades, subjects, and activities, students will remain tense throughout their four years.

Unthinking imitation is essentially a form of escape

Student Yang, a 985 university attendee, participates in at least one social practice project each summer, driven by the reality that a 0.01 GPA difference is negligible. The selection criteria for projects are clear: high approval rates, controllable completion, and clear points. Some projects are so popular they attract thousands of applicants. However, Yang calculates that the time investment, spanning nearly six months, is not always proportional to the return, but the alternative is zero points. The competition for project applications also escalates, with thicker proposals and higher standards annually. Many students feel their busyness yields little genuine learning, blurring the essence of university life.

Unthinking imitation is a form of escape. Fudan associate professor Yu Zhiyuan notes that students lacking direction first adopt societal standards, fearing falling behind if they don't follow others. Cao Dongbo observes that highly competitive students often have anxious parents, now in their 30s and 40s, who intervene as much as previous generations. This is a double dose of anxiety. Students remain wound up, fearing being left behind in life's race, which can lead to psychological issues.

Breaking the success myth of pure ranking

The shift from grades to activities hasn't changed the core logic—success driven by ranking. Cao Dongbo laments that many students haven't had opportunities to explore their passions, as their high school years were filled with score-based pursuits. In university, having choices and a diverse evaluation system can be paralyzing. Fan Wenbing calls for reforming the baoyan system, especially at top universities, to allow students more freedom to develop slowly and find their paths. East China Normal University's Lin Delong acknowledges that competition won't stop with limited resources, but universities can refine evaluation criteria, such as allowing students to skip GPA for one course annually to encourage pursuing passions. Cao Dongbo suggests truly implementing diversified evaluations, not just adding new bonus points, but establishing parallel paths for academic, practical, entrepreneurial, and social service tracks, each with its own standards. Experts argue the next step is to shift societal talent perspectives from standardized screening to personalized recognition, involving universities, employers, graduate schools, families, and society. As Yu Zhiyuan states, while reform optimizes external conditions, students need an internal awakening: shifting from fixed to growth mindsets, finding stability in the social clock, and looking beyond single evaluation systems to see a broader world.