Testing Times: Beijing’s Civil Service Examination
Since Spring Festival, the papers have been full of images of students crowding large job fairs across the city as record numbers of university students preparing to graduate in June search for jobs. Expect more to come, today’s papers announce that by March 20, more than 140 job fairs will have taken place in Beijing.
On Saturday, at 1,368 testing centers around the city, 44,700 young graduates sat the first Beijing Government Civil Service examination of the year. They’re competing for a measly 2,707 positions – and the test is just the first of many hoops they have to jump through in order to get the “golden rice bowl.”
Yesterday’s Beijing Evening News reported that according to the chatter on websites devoted to discussing and analyzing the test, the general consensus was that this year’s paper was noticeably more difficult than past exams.
To give you an idea of the kinds of questions the future bureaucrats of Beijing had to tackle, we translated a few of the questions included in yesterday’s Wanbao report. The Beijing Evening News report itself sourced the questions online from examinees recollections:
In the morning, the examinees had 2 hours to answer 135 multiple-choice questions that tested numeracy, reasoning, common knowledge, linguistic comprehension and expression and data analysis. In the afternoon they had 2 and a half hours to write a paper or shenlun on the topic of “national character.” According to Sina, many students were expecting something on the World Financial Crisis.
Question 1:
A: 27
B: 8
C: 21
D: 18
Answer:D The third number in each row is the difference between the first two numbers in each row divided by 3. (63-9)÷3=(18).
Question 2:
Altogether there are 100 1 fen, 2 fen and 5 fen coins, their total value is 2 yuan. If the value of the 2 fen coins is 13 fen more than then 1 fen coins, then how many of each of the differently valued coins are there?
A: 51、32、17
B: 60、20、20
C: 45、40、15
D: 54、28、18
Answer: A Because the value of the 2 fen coins is 13 fen more than the 1 fen coins, you can exclude answers B,C and D.
Question 3:
Answer: D. Pay attention to the number of sides to the shapes within the ovals - in the first series; a 2-sided shape, followed by a 3-sided shape and a 5-sided shape. The second series begins with a 1-sided, then a 4-sided image. The last box should contain a 5-sided image. 2+3=5，1+4=(5).
Question 4:
At the end of 2007, the total population of China was 1,321,290,000 an increase of 6,810,000 on the previous year ... if we define low-income earners as those receiving between 786-1,067 yuan per annum, the number of rural dwellers on a low income was 28,410,000, 7,090,000 less than the previous year. By what percentage did the low-income rural population, in terms of proportion of total population, decrease in 2007?
A: 0.6
B: 10.6
C: 31.1
D: 40.6
Answer: A. Rather than spending a long time on calculating the answer precisely, a quick glance at the possible answers should reveal that options B-D are way too high.
Links and Sources
The Beijing News: 北京市公务员考试周六举行
Sina: 09年北京公务员考试真题解密 行测7大变化分析
hnwchina.com: 北京公务员考试开考 4万人争夺2700个岗位图 (image)
Beijing Times: 2009年上半年北京公务员笔试成绩4月1日可查 (images)
Sina: Page devoted to the Beijing Civil Service Examination
Sina: BBS devoted to the Beijing Civil Service Examination