Spring is in the air: the smells, the sights and the thoughts of exams. At least that's the case for students set to take the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, in June.

Among them are hundreds of students from rural areas of central and western regions, who are taking part in a program launched by Fudan University. The university recently announced that it will enroll at least 300 rural students in 2014, about 10 percent of its total.

"This is in response to the call to create more opportunities for students from rural areas to study at the country's leading universities," said Ding Guanghong, director of admissions at Fudan.

As part of the program, the 300 students, all of whom were recommended by their schools, had to experience a two-day stay on the campus.

In addition to attending lectures, the students will take a written exam and participate in an interview.

Students who pass the exam will receive preferential treatment - a lower gaokao admission requirement in their local area. Meanwhile, they can apply for a 50,000 yuan ($8,000) scholarship.

According to the Ministry of Education, the average admission rate to key universities from all areas of the country was 8.5 percent in 2011. But for the 680 most impoverished counties it was just 5.7 percent.

In 2013, the Education Ministry made a plea on its website for top universities to take more students from rural areas.

After university spots for students in central and western regions were increased to 30,000 from 10,000, 8.6 percent more rural students were enrolled in the country's leading universities in 2013 than in the previous year, according to the ministry.

Following the national call, many leading universities, such as Tsinghua, Beijing Normal and Nankai, opened their doors wider to students from rural areas.

Earlier this year, Tsinghua University said it will continue to give rural students preferential treatment. Its enrollment plan will be expanded to cover 832 poverty-stricken counties.

In China, rural education has long lagged behind that of developed coastal areas.

In recent years, the Chinese media has consistently reported declining numbers of rural students at the top universities, even though such students accounted for more than 60 percent of those taking the gaokao.

Yang Dongping, a professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, looked into higher education in China and has found that in the 1970s, about 50 percent of freshmen at Tsinghua University, one of the top universities in China, were from rural families. The figure was 17 percent in 2010.

In Hubei province's top universities, Yang found there were 17 middle-class students whose parents were officials or civil servants for each student from a rural or unemployed family.

At Peking University, the number of students from poor, rural families fell to 10 percent in 2005 from about 30 percent from 1978 to 1998, according to research from the university's college of education.

Fudan University told China Daily there has been a decline in the number of its rural students, but didn't provide figures.

These universities said they had various scholarships and financial aid programs to help rural students.

The ministry said it will continue to improve its support work for rural students to ensure that more of them can attend top universities.

"The disparities between rural and urban development has brought an imbalance to education resources, which makes the proportion of rural students attending key universities rather low. It's necessary to solve the problem at its root," said Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences.

wanghongyi@chinadaily.com.cn