Zheng Quanshui said: There are more than 1,000 top students in the college entrance examination, and almost none of them have become top talents! How should I look at it?

Zheng Quanshui’s words were harsh, but they hit the nail right on the head. He is a veteran professor at Tsinghua University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, having mentored countless generations of top students. If these words came from someone else, they might be dismissed as attention-seeking, but coming from him, they carry a whole different weight.

Zheng Quanshui is a professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics at Tsinghua University. He does research on applied mechanics and micro-nano mechanics. He was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019. He did not engage in empty talk. In 2009, he started the "Qian Xuesen Mechanics Class" in Tsinghua, which is referred to as Qian Class in the industry.

From how to choose students, how to arrange courses and how to bring projects, he personally explored the whole process. Later, he went to Shenzhen and took the lead in organizing Shenzhen 001 College, looking for those eccentric talents who could not be picked out in the college entrance examination.

The main idea of what he said is repeated: over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, more than 1,000 provincial champions in the college entrance examination have been produced across the country, but few of these people have really grown into world-class top scientists and industry pioneers.

This sounds harsh, but it can be understood by checking the reality. Looking through the follow-up survey reports of all kinds of top scholars, we can see that many of them later went to industries with stable returns such as finance, law and clinical medicine, and were willing to sit on the bench to engage in basic research.

The truth is actually very simple. What skills did you pick for the college entrance examination? In two hours, according to the standard answer, the knowledge points are written quickly and accurately. This set of skills corresponds to the executive player, not the original player.

The child has been trained for 12 years from the age of 6 to 18 on how to answer the questions correctly, how to deduct less points and how to avoid traps. By the moment he puts on the top scholar cap, his brain has become a precise answering machine. Let him turn around to do original scientific research, is equivalent to let the sprint champion to run a marathon, the track completely changed.

All the efforts Zheng Quanshui has made over the years are actually bypassing the sieve of the college entrance examination. The selection mechanism of Qian class is very interesting. It doesn't look at the total score ranking, but the students' obsession with scientific problems, practical ability and depth of thinking.

They have developed an evaluation system called five-dimensional MOGWL, which puts internal drive, open thinking and perseverance in the forefront. Students can enter the laboratory in their sophomore year, follow academicians to do real topics, allow trial and error, encourage failure, and short-term scores do not matter.

Qian Ban has been running for more than ten years, and the report card is hard. The proportion of graduates who go to MIT, Caltech and Princeton for further study is far higher than the average level of Tsinghua University, and there are not a few who return to China to do original work in aerospace, chips and new materials.

Zheng Quanshui took out the growth path of these students and compared it with the development track of more than 1,000 top scholars. The heart-wrenching words naturally came out-the selection was wrong, and how to make up for it later would get twice the result with half the effort. There is also the "question of Qian Xuesen".

In 2005, Mr. Qian asked in his hospital bed: Why can't our school always cultivate outstanding talents? Over the past 20 years, this problem has not become old, but has become more and more hot with the white-hot international science and technology competition.

The chip is stuck, the lithography machine is constrained, the underlying principle of the big model is hard to catch up, behind every short board, you can see the shadow of the original top talent cut-off. Looking at this matter at the time node of 2026, the sense of urgency is particularly strong.

Since the beginning of this year, the global pattern of artificial intelligence has been greatly reshuffled. DeepSeek, Tongyi Qianwen and Doubao, these large domestic models, have a positive arm-wrestling with OpenAI and Anthropic. The Chinese team has a leading role on the poker table of general artificial intelligence.

But if you look at the resumes of these core members of the team-Liang Wenfeng and Yang Zhilin, almost none of them were the top students in the college entrance examination. The common labels on them are: early entry into the front line of research, independent exploration, and no superstition of standard answers.

Look at the national level in the past two years. In the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" proposal, the construction of an educational power has been placed in a prominent position, and the independent training of top-notch innovative talents has been written as a clear task for the first time.

The Ministry of Education continues to implement the Middle School Student Excellence Program, and the Basic Discipline 101 Program is fully rolled out. As of April 2026, the Ministry of Education said that the "101 plan" has expanded from computers to 31 basic disciplines and key fields. The underlying thinking of these policies is completely in line with Zheng Quanshui's words-from an earlier stage, with a more professional perspective, to find out the real scientific research seedlings.

Shenzhen Zero One College is a more thorough attempt by Zheng Quanshui. This place does not issue diplomas or academic qualifications. It is aimed at outstanding middle school students and college students, allowing them to directly connect with world-class tutors.

Among the students selected by Zero One College, some are from county middle schools, some are from vocational schools, and some are obviously partial students in the college entrance examination system. Zheng Quanshui once said that what he is looking for is a child who is really obsessed with something, not the child with the highest score.

There is a detail of the investigation that is worth pondering. The admission of zero-one college will allow children to dig deeply around an open problem for several days in a row, allowing them to check information, find tools and cross-disciplinary solutions. This way of investigation, the college entrance examination champion is not necessarily dominant.

Some children have high scores and get stuck when they encounter questions that have no standard answers. Some children have mediocre grades and can't get out for days and nights. What Zheng Quanshui wants is the latter. Put it in the perspective of international comparison, all countries are groping for a solution to this matter.

The United States relies on a flexible academic system and private capital. A group of gifted teenagers can skip universities and start their own businesses directly. Israel has a famous Talpiot plan to concentrate its top children into the military-civilian integration channel. Singapore and South Korea both have their own replica plans. The difficulty in China is that both education fairness and top-notch training must be grasped, and neither can be loosened.

If the fair bottom line of the college entrance examination cannot be moved, another top-notch channel will have to be opened. We have to make it clear-Zheng Quanshui's remarks are not denying the number one scholar, this group of children. They have high intelligence quotient, strong will and great family efforts. All of them are valuable resources of the country.

The problem is that after they enter university, the whole training chain does not leave them a window for a "second awakening. Most champions are systematically directed to industries with the highest short-term returns, with few mechanisms to activate their deeper scientific interest and original potential. This is a waste in the education chain and an invisible loss of the national talent pool.

The good news is that some changes are happening in the past two years. Tsinghua Qiuzhen Academy, Peking University Physics Excellence Class and China University of Science and Technology Junior Class College are all learning from Qian Class's practice.

The Ministry of Education has launched a new round of evaluation of the training plan for top-notch students in basic disciplines. A group of colleges and universities have provided real money to provide top-notch students with double mentors, open small stoves, and allow time for free exploration. These movements are not yet on a large scale, but they are in the right direction.

For ordinary families, Zheng Quanshui's words provide a particularly important frame of reference. Of course, the child should be happy to do well in the exam, but if the whole family regards the college entrance examination as the end of life and the champion as the certificate of success, it will harm the child instead.

The real growth curve is very long, depending on what the child is doing and creating when he is 40 or 50. Scores are just admission tickets, not passes. If this concept can be popularized in the parents' circle, China's original soil will be thick.

For policy makers, the path has become more and more clear-the reform of the college entrance examination should continue to push forward, and the evaluation dimensions should be more diversified; At the stage of basic education, children should be left blank so that they can have time to stare blankly, obsess and start work. Higher education should give top-notch young people a small kitchen, allowing failure, partial subjects and slow growth.

When the three lines go smoothly, the answer to Qian Xuesen's question will naturally surface.

I still remember a simple sentence Zheng Quanshui said in a public speech-education is not to stuff children into molds, but to protect and light the unique flame in everyone.

In the final analysis, the story of more than 1,000 top scholars is a mirror that reflects our country's understanding of the word "talent" and how much room there is to move forward.

The road is really long, but someone is already moving forward.