China has launched three special projects to broaden rural students’ access to universities, helping 100,000 poor youngsters enter their dream schools in 2017.

According to statistics from China’s Ministry of Education, thanks to those special projects, 8,500 more students from the country’s remote regions have been enrolled into universities in 2017, with an annual growth rate of 9.3 percent. China’s national, regional, and collegiate plans have ensured 64,000, 27,000, and 9,500 rural students, respectively, to enter ivory towers, offering more enrollment quotas to students from poor areas.

The projects are the latest moves of Chinese authorities sweeping reworking of the higher education system. With vast disparities in teaching standards among different regions, high school students from remote regions have much less chance of getting into universities, especially top-raking ones, compared to their urban peers.

In an effort to tackle the country’s education inequality, Chinese authorities have set lower entry test scores for students from rural areas since 2014, allocating two percent of the admission offers at 95 key universities to them. From 2013 to 2015, the increase in enrollment of these students in key universities remained above 10 percent each year, according to Xinhua News Agency.