Altogether 11,354 Beijing-based college students have applied to become village officials in the city's outskirts this year, which means one out of every 17 senior students in the national capital has applied to the 2,000 vacancies.

Competition will therefore be quite intense and roughly one outof six applicants will stand out, the Beijing Morning Post reported Sunday.

The successful candidates will start working in July as village heads or assistant secretaries of village committees of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing's seven outlying districts and two counties.

The month-long application for the village jobs, which ended on Saturday, drew a number of undergraduate and graduate students from top universities including Beijing University and Renmin University.

The Beijing Morning Post said at least 200 students from Renmin University and more than 400 from Beijing Forestry University have applied.

"The students' interest in village jobs shows they're becoming rational job-seekers who value career development potentials," the newspaper quoted Wang Xiaoxu, an official with Beijing Forestry University. "The country's resolve to build a socialist new countryside has also boosted their confidence in rural jobs."

Sixty applicants from four Beijing-based universities have started to intern in Pinggu District and Yanqing County since early this month.

According to the municipal personnel bureau, 3,000 college graduates will take up grassroots jobs in each of the coming two years to work as officials in 3,978 villages on the outskirts of Beijing.

About 178,000 students are expected to graduate from Beijing-based colleges and universities this summer, according to the municipal education commission.