As a national exam with more than 1 million test takers every year, the National Postgraduates Entrance Examination is very important for students' academic life, and cheating incidents have been exposed from time to time.

The Education Ministry has also taken some measures, such as canceling testing results and noting cheating in personal records.

Number of exam takers bounces up

Statistics from the Ministry of Education showed that 1.77 million students registered for the National Postgraduate Entrance Examination for 2016, which was held over the weekend, marking the first rise after two successive decreases.

Chen Zhiwen, editor-in-chief of eol.cn, a leading education portal in China, said taking the exam and attending master's pro-grams have maintained their popularity among Chinese students as a result of China's current economy and employment situation.

"The number of college graduates in China has kept growing, and graduates have found it increasingly difficult to land a good job. These factors have driven large numbers of students to take the National Post-graduate Entrance Examination and pursue further education on campus," Chen said.

According to a survey of 38,000 students by eol.cn, 43 percent said they chose to take the exam to add to their competitiveness when job hunting.

The survey also found that 60 percent of registered test takers this year were female and 40 percent male. Business administration, accounting and finance continued to be the most popular programs.