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HONG KONG — They ve been at it for years now, cramming forChina s annual college-entrance exam, some of them hooked up to oxygen canisters and intravenous drips of amino acids during late-night and weekend study marathons. Their parents hirespecial tutors, force the kids into educational boot camps in thesummer and promise lavish gifts of cash and cars for good results.Housekeepers and nannies with college degrees come at a hugepremium. Some girls take contraceptives or get hormone injections to make sure they won t be distracted by getting their periodduring the exam. The whole country is in on it. Commercial and military flights arererouted to limit overhead noise during the test. Roads to examvenues are blocked off by the police, honking is prohibited andtaxi rides are free. Shrines and temples are swamped with prayerfulparents. Construction sites go quiet, Internet cafés areshuttered and funeral processions are shunted away from testing sites . In 2008, the Olympic torch relay had to make a detour so the hoopla would not disturb test-taking students. More than 9.1 million students throughout China sat for the collegeexam beginning Thursday morning, competing for 6.85 million placesat Chinese universities, according to Ministry of Education figuresreported by China Daily. The exam is known as the gao kao ( ),pronounced gow kow, and the number of high school test-takers hasdropped each year since 2008, the ministry said, as thegraduation-age population has decreased and more students gravitateto universities abroad. Shanghai, for example, had about 97,000 high school graduates lastyear; 61,000 took the exam. This year, just 55,000 are taking it.The numbers are falling in Beijing, too. The state-run newspaper Global Times cited research data showingthat the number of students wanting to study abroad has increased bymore than 20 percent each year since 2008. "Students don't believe they can have betterprospects if they study in universities in China," XiongBingqi, an education expert, told the paper. "It s no wonder that there is a joke going around thatChinese universities are actually preparatory courses for top U.S.universities," Global Times said, noting that the drop in thenumber of test-takers should serve as a serious warning tomainland colleges. China's universities have failed to putup a good fight against competition from the West. The gao kao remains, by far, the most important factor foradmission to a mainland university. But new research by the workplace manager Regus shows that Chinese employers arenow favoring graduates with internship experience, winningpersonalities and foreign language skills. Just 9 percent ofemployers, especially at large companies, now put educationalbackground as the top priority in hiring. Still, the gao kao is paramount for most Chinese families with highschoolers, which leads not only to obsessive, test-centric studyingbeginning in middle school but also to rampant and innovativecheating. Thousands are caught cheating each year. Cheating is increasingly sophisticated, my colleague SharonLaFraniere in Beijing reported in 2009. One group of parents last year outfitted their childrenwith tiny earpieces, persuaded a teacher to fax them the questionsand then transmitted the answers by cellphone. Another fatherequipped a student with a miniscanner and had nine teachers onstandby to provide the answers. With more and more Chinese students applying to foreignuniversities, the emphasis on the rote memorization required forthe gao kao has come under criticism from some U.S. educators.Another cause for concern, they say, are the methods being used tostudy for the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl,which most U.S. schools require for admission. In a story done jointly by The Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education,Patricia J. Parker, assistant director of admissions at Iowa StateUniversity, which enrolls more than 1,200 Chinese undergraduates,said students have proudly told her about memorizing thousands ofvocabulary words, studying scripted responses to verbal questionsand learning shortcuts that help them guess correct answers. The story s reporters, Tom Bartlett and Karin Fischer, wrote thatMs. Parker has seen conditionally admitted students increasetheir Toefl scores by 30 or 40 points, out of a possible 120, aftera summer break, despite no significant improvement in their abilityto speak English. Her students, she says, don t see this intensetest-prepping as problematic: They think the goal is to pass thetest. They re studying for the test, not studying English. Zinch China, a consulting company that advises American collegesand universities about China, published a report last year thatfound cheating on college applications to be pervasive in China , driven by hyper-competitive parents and aggressive agents. An excerpt from the Zinch report: Most Chinese parents now understand that American schools arelooking for well-rounded students who combine strong testscores, transcripts, and extra-curricular achievement. The problemis that most Chinese students don t have time to participate inmany extra-curricular activities — they are too busy studyingfor and taking tests. In fact, many Chinese parents seeextra-curricular activities as a dangerous distraction fromstudying. The result? Fake achievements, often concocted by agents. Based onour interviews, this happens on about 10 percent of applications.Sometimes a student s silver medal is turned to gold, andsometimes a student lists an award for an activity he or she nevercompleted. 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