Education at the National University prepared students for the royal examinations,the gateway to becoming a mandarin at the court or in the provinces.Those who did not pass the exams became part of the nation’s educated class and often returned to their village as schoolmaster.
Both the examinations and the houours conferred evolved over the century.By the century the multi-stage examinations process could take several months. The frist step, called “thi Hương”, was a regional examination held once every three years. Those who passed the regional exam went to Hà Nội with their sleeping mats, brushes, and ink-stones to sit for the four-part “thi hội”. the examination may to have been held on the site of what is now the national library, as suggested by some historians and by the street name, Tràng Thi, or Examination Street. With anywhere from 450 to 6,000 candidates, the exam area must have been a large one.
The examination was held in four parts, a candidate had to pass each part in sequence in order to qualify for the following stage. The frist stage, Kinh nghĩa, was based directly on the Confucion classics. Examinees were given four subjects from the Confucian canon and told to choose one. In addition, candidates chose one out of three questions based on the five pre-Confucian classics. Finally, they were given two questions based on the Spring and Autumn Annals and told to syntheside them.
For the second part of the examination (chế, chiếu, biểu), a candidate wote as the if he were the king discussing matters of state. Candidates who passed the second test then wote two different kinds of “thơ” and “phú” poems on given topics. The “thơ” í a poem of twenty-eight words divided into four lines of seven words each; the “phú” í a prose poem of eight seven-word lines.
The final part of the doctoral exam was “văn sách”, in which candidates commented on how to handle problems facing the country, drawing from their knowledge of the Confucian classics and the history of previous dynasties.
Those who passed all four sections received the title of Doctoral Laureate (tiến sĩ) and were invited to the palace for the “thi đình”, or palace examination, the king himself posed the questions and read the candidates’ responses. He then ranked special distinction on the three most successful candidates of the highest-ranking group.
From 1076 until 1779, the date of the last royal examination held in Thăng Long (Hà Nội), 2,313 examinees received the title of Doctoral Laureate. Today, 1,306 of their names remain on the eighty-two steles at the Temple of Literaure. Each stele represents one examination year, staring from 1442, the frist year individual names were recorded. The number of examinees awarded the “tiến sĩ” degree in any one year ranged from three to sixty-one, with the ages of the laureates ranging from sixteen to sixty-one. Over the centuties, thirty of the steles have disappeared.
The new mandrins were offered a cap and gown, given a banquet at the palace, and sent home to their villages in triumphal processions. There, they in turn offered a feast to the village, sometimes to their financial ruin. The scholars differed greatly in their contributions to their country. Some were more virtuous than others; some were nothing more than bureaucrats. Yet many were brilliant: mathematicians and philosophers, statesman and finance ministers, and officials renowned for fighting corruption.
Literature and public service was distinct realms in traditional in Việt Nam. Poet contributed to the economic life of their times by bringing high-yielding maize from China, improving techniques for silk weaving and reed mat weaving, and developing a system of irrigation canals. Many of the most brilliant statesman and diplomats were also poet. An example í Nguyễn Trãi (1380-1424), the architect of a victorious fifteenth-century insurrection against the Chinese. He is still honoured as one of Việt Nam’s greatest statesmen.
November 24th, 2009 
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entered regional competitions, but only around fifteen became doctoral laureates after the final examination in the king’s palace.
