World's 10 hardest exams

It's exam season. Last week 9.2 million students sat down to do the gaokao, the annual two-day exam in China. Achieve a Grade A and you'll be fast-tracked through university to the civil service, meaning you never have to work again. If you get a D+ or below, you are executed with a single bullet, or so they say. This is, of course, an outrageous lie. You're allowed as many bullets as you like.
The human brain is an amazing thing, working non-stop 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from the moment of birth through your entire childhood -- and then stopping at the precise moment you step into an exam hall. Instant brain freeze. For me this would continue for three hours, until the magic words "Put down your pen" would cause it to mysteriously start functioning again.
Burhanpur College in Madhya Pradesh, India has only five teachers and five students --but they all failed their exams last week. Newspapers asked who would be most upset: students or teachers. Er, how about parents? They pay the fees.
Meanwhile, a reader named Rahul said: "Exams are like girlfriends. Too many questions. Not enough answers. Explanations unavailable. Result is always 'Fail'."
Now here's the good news. In the UK, one university scrapped all the complex aptitude tests for entry to a postgraduate course and replaced them with a spelling test. Professors said it worked better for them. (The only applicant to get 100% was, of course, Asian.)
I like this idea. Every course should have a simple, practical, one-question test. It would make nine million students in China happy, not the mention whoever has to mark nine million papers.
Exam for electronic engineering students: "Dismantle your mobile phone and use the parts to build a thermo-nuclear device. Blow up the bike sheds."
Exam for law students: "File a lawsuit blaming the US trade deficit on Spanish cucumbers. Receive a half-grade bonus for winning the case."
Exam for medical students: "Using only your car keys, remove your duodenum and place it on the invigilator's desk. Sew up the opening."
Exam for MBA students: "Raise $50 billion from people around you to launch an unspecified product. Lose all the money. Bluff it out. Successful candidates will get fulltime jobs at Goldman Sachs."
Exam for architecture students: "Using only materials found in the playground, build a new wing for staff relaxation. Include a bar and a pool."
Exam for economics students: "Predict the precise movements of stock markets around the world over the next three hours. Afterwards, explain why you were wrong with a straight face."
Exam for paleontology students: "Remove a tooth from your mouth. Write a paper extrapolating from the tooth the existence of 50-metre feathered lizard men."
Exam for psychiatry students: "Lie under the table and talk about your problems. Tell yourself to shut up and get a grip."
Exam for astronomy students: "Using a rolled-up exam paper and the lenses from your spectacles, make a telescope. Find God. Note His precise co-ordinates. Start praying for good exam results."

Amen.

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