SHANGHAI, June 27 -- ANHUI Province's top education authority has apologized to 264,000 arts students who sat for this year's national college entrance exam for an error in counting marks.

The score in the 39th question on the comprehensive ability test paper of arts was not counted due to a failure in the computer system, said the provincial education committee, the local-based Xin'an Evening News reported today.

The enrollment mark lines for arts students, or the admission threshold, will be reset according to new scores, said the committee.

Students were asked to be patient as the corrected scores will not come out until Friday.

Consequently, the students will have to file their applications, or the universities where they want to go, on July 1, four days later than students in other provinces.

The commission reported no mistakes in counting scores in other subjects.

Anhui ranked third in China this year on the number of student applicants in the national college entrance exam.

It had 564,000 examinees in this year's two-day exam on June 7 and 8, after Henan and Shandong provinces.

Competition for university places is fierce in China. Around 9.5 million students sat for the annual exam this year to compete for 5.67 million university places.