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The Imperial Civil Service Examination is one of the most distinctive institutions in Imperial China.Started in 607 and abolished only in 1905, its millennial persistence shaped Imperial Chinese politics and society in fundamental ways.On one hand,the Imperial Examination is considered as an exemplary of meritocracy, providing an efficient mechanism to select talents to govern the bureaucracy.On the other hand,the effectiveness of social mobility and meritocracy provided by the Imperial Exam is not without challenges.The argument is that in Imperial China, education was mainly privately funded and costly, so only those who could afford it had the access to success.We empirically study whether and to which extent access mattered, focusing on a particular kind of access associated with participation costs.Since there was only one examination center in each province for provincial exams, participation costs (i.e., traveling and time) were differentiated by space.We find student came from counties further away from the provincial exam center had higher provincial ranking and higher chance of passing next level national exam, and we provide a model of spatial selection to explain this pattern.Moreover, we find some evidence suggesting that the selection mechanism may have substantial impact on regional inequality in exam achievement.Specifically, an increase of average distance decrease a county's performance in provincial exam by 37.37%, as measured by number of provincial pass,or 41.04% as measured by the number of provincial graduates per capita.