After paying the money, the teacher in charge of recruitment of the Siamos Academy handed Luo Luo a wooden school badge and urged her to remember to take the entrance test tomorrow afternoon.
It was not only the St. Roland Academy of Magic that held entrance tests for new students. In fact, basically all Academies of Magic would conduct aptitude tests on new students before they enrolled. Of course, the entrance tests of these academies would not be as perverse as the St. Roland Academy of Magic. Ordinary Academies of Magic only served to screen out some ordinary people who had no talent for magic cultivation. In addition, they would use this test to roughly classify the students' talents and charge different tuition fees according to their aptitude.
After the Magician's Association spared no effort in promoting this gradient fee model for centuries, it had already been thoroughly popularized in many Academies of Magic in the human world.
Nurturing a magician was not simple. Even the most basic magician's daily consumption was extremely astonishing. Therefore, the tuition fees of most Academies of Magic were incomparably high. If they were to charge fees according to the normal method, it would be tantamount to completely excluding the children of commoners. Especially those extremely talented children, because they could not bear the astronomical tuition fees, they could only let their talents be buried.
In the long run, this was undoubtedly not beneficial to the development of magic.
The era of Roland was rather special. The human race was at war and urgently needed more magicians to join the war. Therefore, after a discussion, several major human factions decided to directly subsidize the St. Roland Academy of Magic. At that time, the tuition fees of the new students in the academy were in fact directly sponsored by the state. As long as one had the talent to become a magician, then one could attend school without spending a single cent. However, as a price, magicians at that time basically had to report to the military as soon as they left the academy.
If such a thing were to happen today, it would certainly cause a commotion. Complaints such as' tyranny clause 'and' deprivation of personal rights' would inevitably be heard. However, the magicians at that time generally had no objections to this, because the vast majority of people had chosen to become magicians in order to save the fate of the human race and reverse the disadvantage of the human race in terms of high-end combat power. Even if the military did not mention this matter, they would still pack their luggage and rush to the battlefield.
However, once the war was over, it would be difficult to maintain this method of training mages. The main reason was that the country was too poor. The damage caused to the economy by a long-term large-scale war was immeasurable. Because of the long history, many statistics were not accurate. However, according to the current conservative estimate, more than half of the human population was homeless during the first magic war. Especially during the most difficult period, nearly two-thirds of the land was lost, and the number of people who fled was uncountable.
Now that the war had finally stopped, the most important thing for the various forces was to restore their economies and find ways to settle the refugees who had returned home.
Naturally, there was no extra money to be used to nurture mages. Although everyone knew that the current peace was only temporary and understood the importance of mages to the human race, objectively speaking, the need for mages was indeed not as urgent as it was during the war. Therefore, all the countries gradually reduced this part of the expenditure.
The Saint Roland Academy of Magic founded by Roland was fine. Due to its outstanding contribution in the war, it could still receive some subsidies after the war ended. However, other Academies of Magic that were established later were not so lucky and could only be self-sufficient.
After struggling for a period of time, most of the Academy of Magic chose to increase the tuition fees to make up for the losses. From then on, the children of the poor could only watch the children of the nobles who were far less talented than them become mages, while they could only quietly farm in the fields. In the end, they became farmers who faced the yellow soil with their backs against the sky like their ancestors.
Fortunately, the Sorcerer's Association quickly noticed this situation. By reforming the Academy of Magic's fee system and implementing a tiered fee model, on the one hand, it could make the academy self-sufficient, and on the other hand, it could also improve the situation of the unfair education resources to a certain extent.
To put it bluntly, the essence of this fee model was to let the less talented children of the rich pay more tuition fees to study in the academy. After that, the academy could use the money to subsidize the more talented students, which was tantamount to lowering the entry threshold for those who were talented but were born in a commoner's family.
However, in terms of specific operation, the standards of each academy might be different. Take the Royal College of Magic and Magic, the future Supreme Magus Your Honor had once studied in as an example. Rob's alma mater belonged to the category of top academies with relatively loose admission requirements. The pre-admission test only roughly divided the students into four grades: unqualified, qualified, good, and excellent.
Naturally, Rob belonged to the top grade. However, when he first entered the academy, he actually wasn't that eye-catching. Archmage remembered that there were more than 40 people who entered the academy with him who were rated as excellent. These people only needed to pay a quarter of the normal tuition fees to study in the academy.
But even so, the young man was still a little short of money. He used up the last copper coin in his pocket and barely managed to scrape together half of the tuition fee. Later on, the academy saw that he was talented and made an exception to let him pay the other half of the tuition fee on credit. This was also the reason why Rob had to work part-time and desperately in his first year.
In fact, from a technical point of view, the Academy of Magic could have more detailed classifications of these 40 people. On this point, the St. Roland Academy of Magic was the best representative. This was once the number one Academy of Magic of the human race, and the respect for talent had almost reached a morbid level. The admission threshold of the academy was frighteningly high. Freshmen who were rated as excellent by the Royal College of Magic and Magic were only barely qualified to enter the St. Roland Academy of Magic.
On this basis, the St. Roland Academy of Magic would further divide the recruited geniuses into nine grades according to the strength of their talents. Each grade charged a different tuition fee. Students in the seventh grade only had to pay a nominal fee of one gold coin, while students in the other two grades not only didn't have to pay tuition fees, but also received a considerable amount of subsidies.
However, geniuses of this level were very rare. Basically, only one or two students in the eighth grade would appear every 100 years. As for the peerless geniuses in the ninth grade, there were only two in the history of the St. Roland Academy of Magic and Magic in more than 900 years. There were actually many similar examples in the history of St. Roland Academy of Magic where people who weren't talented in the beginning eventually achieved unimaginable achievements. This was also why the Royal College of Magic and Magic was unwilling to divide the freshmen's aptitudes in too much detail.
On the other hand, although Steins and Demain both emphasized talent, they also encouraged their students to continuously improve through hard work. There were actually many similar examples in history where people who weren't very talented in the beginning eventually achieved unimaginable achievements. This was also why the Royal College of Magic and Magic was unwilling to divide the freshmen's aptitudes in too much detail.
Steins believed that every student possessed limitless possibilities. Dividing aptitudes in too much detail could easily seal a person's coffin. Once a student realized where their limits were, they wouldn't be able to do their best in their studies and life without reservation. The ninth-grade supreme magus explained this as follows: It's like when you train for high jump. What's important isn't how high you can jump, but how high you believe you can jump. If you believe in your heart that you can only jump a meter, then you might never be able to surpass that height in the future.
Siamos Academy definitely couldn't compare to the top two academies before it, so it didn't put too much thought into the entrance test. It adopted the most popular five-grade system in the entire magic world. A-Grade aptitude was the best, D-Grade aptitude was the worst, and E-Grade aptitude was the standard of an ordinary person. The content of the test was mainly elemental affinity, followed by mental strength and perception. As for the remaining aspects like combat level, spellcasting speed, spell stability and the like, they would only gradually reveal themselves after a period of systematic study. Thus, they weren't part of the entrance test.
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