Graduates attend the commencement ceremony of Tsinghua University held in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua]

"Does eighty percent of Tsinghua University's students go abroad after graduation?"

As this year's high school graduates are busy choosing universities and majors, discussions about universities have become hot topics on social media. Rumors about top universities, like Tsinghua University, have also thrived.

The Tsinghua University Student Journalists Association recently compiled and refuted 10 widely circulated false statements about Tsinghua.

The first false statement claims that 80 percent of Tsinghua University graduates choose to go abroad.

Videos online showed that there were few people consulting at the booths of top universities such as Tsinghua and Peking at a university promotion event.

While some netizens said it was because only a few students can achieve scores high enough for these universities, others claimed that top students who are patriotic opt for other universities because 80 percent of students from top universities, including Tsinghua, go abroad after graduation.

However, the percentage of Tsinghua graduates pursuing further education overseas has been declining in recent years, from 16.5 percent in 2018 to only 7.1 percent last year. This rate is not high compared to other domestic universities, said the association, citing Tsinghua University's employment reports.

Another false statement says over 1,000 Tsinghua graduates work at Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX. However, according to estimates by the US recruitment website Zippia, Tsinghua is not mentioned in the top 10 universities with the largest number of employees at SpaceX. The 10th-ranked university has only about 400 graduates at SpaceX, said the association.

Other false statements include: attending a high-priced "Tsinghua University training class" guarantees admission to Tsinghua. The university confirmed that it had never conducted such paid training classes.

It's also stated that about 43 percent of Tsinghua courses are taught in English, which the student association debunked as misinformation after a simple calculation.

Why are there so many rumors about Tsinghua? According to the association, in the era of the internet economy, anything related to Tsinghua University attracts traffic, and traffic means money.