Newly enrolled male students at Beijing Forestry University (BFU) are currently finding themselves surrounded by a lot of girls.

"This year we enrolled 3,500 students and girls outnumbered boys by 1,000," said Liu, who works at the enrolment office of BFU. In 2005 the gender ratio was still 1:1 (male to female), according to statistics from BFU.

The same situation happened at the China Agricultural University (CAU), according to its enrolment office. Its female ratio has been increasing by 1 to 2 percent every year since 2002 and reached 57 percent in 2011.

What has brought about the change in statistics?

Zhu Xudong, director of the Center for Teacher Education Research at Beijing Normal University, said it is because of the Chinese education system. "In China, girls have been enjoying benefits through their primary education period. As most Chinese textbooks are memory-oriented, focusing on remembering a lot," he said. "Girls have natural advantages in this field as they are quieter and can concentrate more easily."

"Girls are more competitive in the gaokao (college entrance examination in China), a large part of which is testing memory," explained Zhu. "They achieve high marks easier than boys."

In fact, Chinese girls have been doing so well that even universities like Tsinghua, which is traditionally known as predominantly male, has been enrolling more girls. The ratio was 7:3 in 2009, but has changed to 2:1 in 2012.

As for Beijing Normal University, which always had more girls than boys, this year the number is 600:1500.

From 1995 to 2007, the number of girls in college rose from 35.4 percent to 45.7 percent, and the latest figure from the Ministry of Education is that girls outnumber boys by 384,000 in 2010.

This phenomenon has forced many universities to change. For example, previous men's residences have been rebuilt for girls.

Is this a triumph for gender equality in China?

"Many Chinese universities are still discriminating against girls in their admission ratios by imposing male quotas in the enrolment plan and raising girl's entry standards," Huang Yizhi, a Beijing-based lawyer, told Metro Beijing.

"Take Renmin University of China as an example. It accepts boys who have 601 gaokao points to study minor languages, while girls need 614 points," he said.

Even though more girls are being enrolled year on year, Huang said the girl numbers are still not enough. "Especially for universities like Tsinghua, 2:1 is just not satisfactory," said Huang.

Huang said Chinese society still expects girls to stay away from science and engineering, which is discriminatory.

"Girls are being taught that they should learn humanities rather than science. This is just like telling them they are born to do the house work," Huang said.

However, rather than blame it on society's expectation of girls, Zhu still thinks that girls are good at humanities because they are talented in memorizing things. According to Zhu, the current situation is a natural result of the education system rather than discrimination.

"Chinese girls are better at humanities as they are talented in memorizing things, thus through long term selection and comparison people draw conclusions that girls should learn humanities," said Zhu.

"If something has to be changed it's this education system, which tests more memory than creativity," he added.