First of all, Chinese Imperial Examination throughout the history has changed little, Ming and Qing dynasty’s examination methods were largely the same. In order to fully explain, a little background information is needed.

According to Wikipedia (1), Ming/Qing dynasty’s there are four level of tests, Entry-Level which is held locally every year; top 10 student will be given the title of 秀才(Xiu Cai), and have the privilege to enter the next level of testing.

Provincial exams is held in the provincial capital at every three years, passing candidate will be given the title of 举人(Ju Ren), which will be given the privilege to enter next level of testing. Once given the title of Ju Ren, candidate is also allowed to be entering in to civil service and given low level governmental positions. Ju Ren title is also significant due to the fact this title is also grant the living stipend from the government. Statistically, according to Baidu encyclopedia (2), typically each provincial exam only grants the 40 to 130 people per province.

Metropolitan exam is held in the capital city every three years. Passing candidate will be given the title of 贡士(Gong Shi), which again will be given the privilege to enter the final level of examination. Typically, only around 300 candidates will be granted such title per test in the country (2).

Palace exam is held in the imperial palace every three years, often supervised by the emperor himself. Emperor himself will typically make up the exam, and also responsible to determine the ranking of the top three candidates. All other passing candidate will be given the title of 进士(Jin Shi).

All testing curriculum includes the "Five Studies": military strategy, civil law, revenue and taxation, agriculture and geography, and the Confucian classics. Exams methods are typically a combination of the following (2):

墨义(Mo Yi): short answer of simple questions, typically 30-50 questions. This part can be given as oral exams.

贴经(Tie Jing): a variation of fill the blank; where a page or a sentence is given from the “Five Studies” and Confucian classics, the tester is required to complete the text before and after.

策问(Ce Wen): write essay to analyze and provide solution to given a topic, which could include current event or hypothetical situation.

试赋(Shi Fu): Shi means poetry, Fu means a poetry like essay; both are required.

经义(Jing Yi): Philosophical essay based on Confucian classics.

武举(Wu Ju): Military branch testing only. This will test candidate’s physical and combat ability such as weight lifting, horse riding, archery, mounting combat, and many more.

Looking at the timing of all levels of testing, even at fastest pace, any candidate will need at least 5 years to complete all levels of exams. Often people spend their entire life studying in order to pass the tests. There are even people whose sole aim is test far enough to obtain government stipend, so the family can simply live off that income. There are also many who would never made it pass Xiu Cai stage, thus given the euphemism 穷秀才(poor Xiu Cai), since such title does not grant any income.

Consider the testing method of Tie Jing, which requires one to fill the text before and after any given page/sentence from the 9 books; which means in order to pass it, one has to memorize at least large portions of the books. According to Miyazaki (3), of the 9 books has a combine of 431,286 characters; although not a good comparison, you can consider a character as a word. The amount of memorization is akin to memorizing the entire Illiad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and probably more. To some, that might not be such tall task. I hope this answers at least some of your questions; and hopefully understand the awkward English from a Chinese man. Sources: (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination (2) http://baike.baidu.com/view/13684.htm?fromtitle=%E7%A7%91%E4%B8%BE&fromid=75871&type=syn#2_1 (Chinese) (3) http://www.gcisd-k12.org/cms/lib4/TX01000829/Centricity/Domain/811/Chinese%20Civil%20Service%20Exam.pdf