Of course, for ordinary people, this recommendation qualification was practically equivalent to zero—not completely nonexistent, but close.
Exceptionally outstanding commoner and citizen students sometimes got lucky enough to receive such a recommendation qualification.
But compared with the total number of commoner and citizen students, calling their numbers exceedingly rare would still be an exaggeration.
Ninety percent of recommendation slots went to students born into nobility.
The remaining nine percent went to the children of powerful government officials.
And the final one percent went to truly gifted students among the general public.
Xia Yuanfang was probably the only ordinary commoner in all these years to have been recommended to a First-Class University.
As long as Tantai Sinian had been qualified to recommend her at the time, it could not be revoked more than a decade later.
Unless the materials used for that recommendation had been falsified.
And that paper from back then was absolutely not fake. Even now, it remained a milestone in genetic science research within the Beichen Empire.
The only thing false about it was probably the order of the authors' names.
But that had nothing to do with the recommendation qualification.
Among the hard requirements for recommendation qualifications, having a signed paper published in a First-Class Science Journal counted even if one was only the fifth author.
What was more, if they truly investigated it, Xia Yuanfang should have been the first author of that paper, not the second! Everyone knew full well that Xia Yuanfang had likely traded that authorship order for Tantai Sinian's recommendation to university! But so long as neither she nor Tantai Sinian admitted it, it could only remain speculation and could not be used as actual court evidence.
In a moment of anger, Tantai Sinian had exposed the matter, only to realize afterward