A total of 120,000 students in China's quake-hit areas started their three-day national college entrance exam on Thursday morning, which was delayed about a month after the May 12 earthquake.

Among them, 96,000 students come from 45 counties in Sichuan Province, and 24,000 from 17 counties in Gansu Province. In a whole, they make up 1.1 percent of all senior high school graduates attending the college entrance exam this year.

About 78 percent of them will attend the most important exam in their lives in makeshift houses.

The earth-quake zones have been granted an enrollment rate of 2 percent more than the previous plan. The Ministry of Education has asked the country's 1,000-plus institutions of higher learning to increase their enrollment quota for the quake-hit areas.

(Xinhua News Agency July 3, 2008)