Do You Know?: I, the Little Cabinet Elder, Regent of the World.

Chapter 20: Strategy Discussion (Part 1)

More than 10,000 candidates took the exam, each taking three sessions, which meant nearly 30,000 papers. Because each paper had to be reviewed by several examiners, the workload was significantly increased.

The grading process takes about fifteen days. The papers must be graded well and ranked in order of quality.

This is a tough battle!
The chief and deputy examiners do not participate in grading the papers. They are mainly responsible for coordinating the examination affairs, supervising the process, and adjudicating disputed papers. Their core responsibilities are review and final judgment, and determining the final ranking.

Therefore, the two examiners will focus on the papers recommended by the examiners below, that is, the recommended papers.

A test paper must be reviewed by at least two examiners. If both examiners deem it acceptable, then the paper can be selected and added to the "recommended paper" list.

Generally, each examiner has thirty slots for recommending papers, which are divided into main papers and backup papers, and are submitted together to the two chief and deputy examiners.

There are fifteen examiners grading the papers. Each session has 450 papers submitted. The two chief and deputy examiners will slowly select the papers, make an initial ranking for each session, and eliminate some papers that they deem unqualified, leaving only about 400 papers.

In this way, after eliminating some unqualified papers in all three sessions, a total of more than 1,200 papers were left.

By now, the papers have been graded, and the results, including the grade level of each paper, the ranking, and the examiners' annotations, have been released.

Therefore, the names of the sealed entities can now be opened for final comprehensive sorting.

In theory, if one person takes three exams, then 1,200 papers would correspond to 400 people.

However, this is only an idealized consideration. In reality, due to the students' specialization in certain subjects, some students may only rank in the top 400 in one of the three exams, while others may rank in the top 400 in two of them. Only a few students will rank in the top 400 in all three exams.

One thousand two hundred exam papers typically correspond to six or seven hundred test takers.

Those who make it into the top 400 in all three rounds are destined to be ranked, and will at least be in the second tier when sorted.

Candidates who rank in the top 400 in both exams will not fail the exam; if their policy essays are outstanding, they may even be ranked among the top two.

Only those who only managed to rank in the top 400 in a single exam were in a relatively dangerous situation.

Because the government places great importance on policy essays, it is unlikely that candidates who rank in the top 400 in the second policy essay will fail the exam.

Therefore, those candidates who only made it into the top 400 in one exam, and that exam was either the first or third one, were destined for a tragic fate.

There were quite a few candidates like this, often numbering four or five hundred, and which lucky ones would ultimately pass depended entirely on the examiners' preferences and mood.

So-called insider trading often occurs at this time.

For the children of the powerful and wealthy to succeed in the imperial examinations through insider trading, they actually need to rely on their own abilities to reach this level, achieving the generally accepted minimum of "at least one subject ranking in the top 400".

This comprehensive ranking process will eliminate over 300 people.

After going through three rounds of selection—recommendation, single-round ranking and elimination, and comprehensive ranking and elimination—those who survived became the tribute scholars.

Furthermore, because a scholar named Zhang Yuan had failed the imperial examination in the past and angrily defected to the Western Xia, eventually rising to the position of prime minister, the emperor was deeply saddened and announced that the imperial examination would no longer dismiss anyone, but would only rank them.

In other words, once you reach the level of a tribute student, you can start celebrating if you don't ask for anything more.

Of course, some people have a carefree and leisurely attitude, while others are ambitious and eagerly await the examination for the position of probationary scholar.

Imperial Examination Hall.

The chief examiner, Ouyang Xiu, and the deputy chief examiner, Wang Yaochen, sat side by side at a wooden desk. On the desk were several stacks of papers, all recommended papers submitted by the examiners below.

These are the recommended papers for the "Policy Inquiry on Current Affairs" session, totaling 450. All the submitted papers were to be initially screened and ranked by the two chief examiners.

After three preliminary screenings and rankings, if the examiners have no objections, the sealed names can be removed, and the seventeen examiners will witness the final comprehensive ranking.

The overall ranking is what is released as the yellow list.

At a glance, these policy recommendations are marked with words such as "recommended" and "accepted".

The four evaluation criteria of the examiners are: recommended, passable, rough, and no.

An article that qualifies to be presented to the main and associate examiners will receive at least one "recommendation" and at most two or three "recommendations".

At this moment, the chief and deputy examiners were meticulously grading the papers, striving to ensure the fairness of this grand spring imperial examination. "Huh?"

Deputy Chief Examiner Wang Yaochen had just put down one exam paper when he casually picked up another, glanced at it, and couldn't help but be slightly surprised.

The chief examiner, Ouyang Xiu, paid no attention to the sound.

The gasps of surprise during the grading of the imperial examinations in spring were so commonplace that they were hardly surprising.

If Wang Yaochen felt that the exam paper in his hand was excellent enough, he would discuss with me and work together to give the paper a fair ranking.

"Your Majesty," the minister replied, "I have heard that the people are the foundation of the state, and when the foundation is firm, the state is at peace; weapons are the instruments of the state, and when the weapons are sharp, the state is powerful. Now, the Jianghuai region is flooded, and the roads are blocked with starving corpses."

Wang Yaochen read the article carefully, took a sip of tea, pondered for a while, and then smiled.

It has a rigorous structure, a systematic approach to countermeasures, and good operability. It also draws on historical examples to illustrate current issues, taking into account both the authority of the emperor and the demands of the scholar-officials.

interesting!
Jiang Zichuan, not bad!

The process of recommending and sorting papers does not allow for the removal of candidates' names from the paper list.

However, even before the name was removed, Wang Yaochen vaguely recognized the owner of the paper.

Such a grand, upright, and practical policy question could not be posed without genuine insight.

Especially when it comes to the frontier, let alone the candidates for the imperial examinations, even some court officials might not be able to offer solutions as effective as those in this essay.

The person who wrote this article must have been to the frontier and received extensive guidance from a high-ranking official.

This policy essay is almost in a class of its own.

Highly qualified candidates study in the border regions.
It's not hard to guess!
As Han Zhang's only disciple and a renowned figure, Jiang Zhao may not even know that he receives a great deal of attention from Han's faction.

Not to mention that he once wrote a letter to comfort Wang Yaochen, who was in mourning, which attracted even more attention from the Han faction.

With a wave of his hand, Wang Yaochen placed this paper at the very top of the recommended list.

If this exam paper was indeed written by Jiang Zhao, that would be for the best, as it would also help to promote the future core of the Korean faction.

Even if this paper wasn't written by Jiang Zhao, it wouldn't matter, as it was already of the highest quality in policy essays.

"Ok?"

Ouyang Xiu looked up in surprise and reached out to take the paper.

Directly ranked first?

Wang Yaochen didn't say anything, he just nodded.

time flies.

After fifteen days of grading and preliminary ranking, the top scorers from several exams have been determined.

In the first round of the calligraphy competition, Dou Bian, courtesy name Yanfa, came in first place. Although the quality of his essay was controversial, he secured his position after being reviewed by more than a dozen examiners.

In the second round of policy questions on current affairs, the first place winner was Jiang Zhao, courtesy name Zichuan. His essay was recognized by both the chief and deputy examiners, and many examiners passed it around for review, also giving it high praise.

Some things, you don't know until you compare them, and once you do, it's easy to tell which is better and which is worse.

In the third round of examinations, which included essays, judgments, edicts, proclamations, and memorials, Su Shi, courtesy name Zizhan, came in first place with his essay "On the Utmost Importance of Kindness in Punishment and Reward," which was highly praised by Ouyang Xiu.

The initial ranking has been completed, and the quality of the articles has been determined. From now on, the sealed names can be removed, and a comprehensive ranking can be conducted.

The dozen or so examiners, who were usually so refined and cultured, all had their own connections, yet they argued fiercely over some controversial top three spots.

(End of this chapter)