Yajun Zheng

3.7609 learners

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 62 graduating students from top Chinese universities, *After Acing the College Entrance Exam* unpacks the hidden inequalities shaping elite students’ post-college trajectories. Beyond the hype of the gaokao (China’s high-stakes college entrance exam), the book reveals how class background, cultural capital, and access to unwritten campus rules divide students into two distinct groups: goal-driven strategists who navigate academic and career systems with intentionality, and intuition-reliant learners who struggle to adapt to elite university norms. It explores four career identity types—autonomous strivers, opportunistic achievers, lost navigators, and value-aligned contributors—and highlights how marginalized students face "cultural disembedding" and identity confusion as they navigate unfamiliar elite spaces. Crucially, the book emphasizes that individual agency can break class barriers: many students redefine success, reframe their goals, and leverage campus resources to carve out meaningful paths, challenging the myth that elite education only reproduces social hierarchies.

Stendhal

4.5478 learners

Set in early 19th-century France, *The Red and the Black* follows Julien Sorel, a sharp but impoverished young man from a provincial sawmill family. Obsessed with Napoleon’s rags-to-riches story, Julien rejects his working-class roots, first securing a tutoring position with the wealthy de Rênal family in Verrières—where he sparks a forbidden affair with the kind-hearted Madame de Rênal. After a scandal forces his escape, he navigates the hypocritical, cutthroat world of a Besançon seminary, then climbs into Parisian high society as a secretary for the powerful Marquis de la Mole, winning the heart of the rebellious noblewoman Mathilde de la Mole. Caught between burning ambition, conflicting loves, and the rigid class barriers of his era, Julien’s desperate bid for status culminates in a tragic act of violence, laying bare the cruel absurdity of a society that crushes those who dare to cross its rigid lines.