It is unclear who prepared the résumé, which was addressed to the Shanghai Starriver Bilingual School but whose claims could not be independently verified. As in urban school districts in the United States and elsewhere, it is common for parents in Chinese cities to hire coaches to help their children gain admission to selective schools.

A staff member at Shanghai Starriver declined to comment, except to say that the school did not accept résumés from parents as part of the admissions process. The boy’s father also declined to comment, saying he did not want to draw attention to his son.

The competition for seats at top schools in China is notoriously cutthroat. In some cities, the wealthy and well connected pay large sums of money, sometimes described as “donations,” to secure placements in top programs.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy head of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, said China needed to distribute education resources more evenly and to begin evaluating students on more than just test scores.

“There is a competition to rank every student,” he said. “Under these circumstances, of course parents want their kids to rank in the top. Then it worsens this kind of anxious competition.”

The boy’s résumé reads like a PowerPoint presentation, complete with growth charts and stick-figure clip art. It includes discussion of his adversity quotient and his artistic talents. It also provides details of his schedule — time for memory training, English diary class, sports and piano — and samples of his artwork, including drawings of dogs and fish.

“I never cry when I get shots,” the résumé says. “Starting when I was a year and a half old, I would get up by myself when I fell down. Everyone praised me as brave.”