Recently, my classmate's sister got her college entrance exam scores. She's from Anhui. Both English and Chinese were above 120, but math and physics were only half of the total score, 513 points. Average level.

She's struggling with choosing a school. I told her she could come to Shanghai, or at least Jiangsu, Hangzhou, the Yangtze River Delta area, which develops fast and has good support.
But she can probably only get into a second-tier university that just meets the threshold. She wants to go to a first-tier normal university in Chuzhou. She also gave an example: one of her classmates scored 625 or something, and in Shanghai could get into a better second-tier university, but for them, they still prefer to stay in Anhui, perhaps go to a first-tier university in Hefei.
Personally, I think future development path is more important. Where you attend undergraduate school determines where your network is. Otherwise, the only other option is to take the postgraduate entrance exam. I always feel that many students choose schools just for face.
They think school rank > location, but I think location is a priority. Because as far as I know, the average salary for a bachelor's degree graduate in Hefei is only 5k-8k, and for a master's degree, it's only 15k. This doesn't change much.