TO Zhang Xini, a third year senior school student, the coming New Year holiday won't bring any relaxation.

As a student at the Shanghai No. 3 Middle School for Girls, facing the college entrance exam this June, she has decided to spend the one-day holiday as usual - buried in her school books.

Zhang is determined to enter Fudan University as a major in Economic Management.

She is one of the large contingent of more than 100,000 such students who will vie with each other to win one of the limited number of places at universities next year.

If she fails in the entrance exam, she has said she would try again and never give up. "Life without a bachelor's degree can be very hard," the 18-year-old girl added.

Days, almost completely occupied by study, are quite dull for Zhang, who gets up at 6:30am and burns the midnight oil everyday.

Compared with Zhang, Xu Lina, a senior student at East China Normal University will face a more complicated new start.

Her aim by the end of next year is to transform herself into a white-collar worker, a saleswomen at best, and earn enough money to support herself in Shanghai. Although she had the chance of taking an exam which could have led directly to postgraduate study, but she has abandoned it and started seeking a career.

"I know what I really want to do. Maybe the salary for the first year will be quite low, due to my lack of working experience and my employer's failure to recognize my abilities, but I don't care, as long as I have a wide scope to develop myself," she said.

However the picture for graduate job-hunters is quite dismal. People's Daily reported that there will be 2.8 million graduates in 2004, a sharp increase of 24 per cent on the 2.12 million in 2003 with an employment rate of 70 per cent.

One of Xu's classmates called Laura has squeezed herself into three "talent fairs" and sent about 30 resumes to different work units, but only one of these brought her the chance of an interview and she is still awaiting a job offer.