LEADIN:
Chinese students have long had a strong presence in American university campuses, looking for better opportunities outside of China.
And now, with almost a third of international students in the United States coming from China, growing numbers of teenagers from wealthy Chinese families are getting a head start on the competition by starting high school in the U.S..
STORYLINE:
The dream: America, and its prestigious universities.
It's the goal of many Chinese teenagers like these to be accepted to top universities overseas.
And they're preparing for the chance to be admitted earlier and earlier - by leaving China for high school in the United States.
With more than 333,000 of its students in U.S. colleges and graduate schools, China has long been the top supplier of international students in America.
Now Chinese high school students are following suit in astonishing fashion: Last fall, the U.S. issued 31,889 F-1 student visas to Chinese youth planning to attend American high schools, up from just 639 in 2005.
Xu Yi is the CEO of Focus Education, a Beijing firm specialising in training Chinese students to study in the U.S.. He sees growing demand in China for a U.S. high school education:
"There's a micro trend that is very important, and that is that more and more people are going to the United States for high school," he says.
"So those students are leaving home at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and they spend four years in America for high school. Then they migrate on to college for another four years. A lot of them might even do a Ph.D. or masters after this. That's a big trend for us."
Some of the high schoolers want to escape the extra pressure at home, where students often study late into the night with little opportunity for extracurricular activities.
Others, like 18-year-old Dan Xu who is studying for the SAT test to enter a U.S. college, believe studying in the U.S. will help them snag coveted spots at more prestigious American colleges.
"The whole reason why I went to U.S. for high school is because I want to go to a better college. And that's the whole reason. That's the majority of the point," he says.
"The reason why Chinese parents are so focused on studying is because, in China, it's so competitive. Like, there are so many Chinese students who graduate every year, and there, it is really hard to find jobs."
According to a recent report by the Institute of International Education, a U.S. based independent not-for-profit organisation specialising in international education, by the end of 2013 the number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased to a record high of 819,644 students in the 2012/2013 academic year.
From those, 29 percent come from China, according to the U.S. State Department of Homeland Security as of April 1st 2014 - making China the biggest source of international students.
Many Chinese are conscious about the growing competition to access American universities and they're now seeking to get ahead of the game by starting their studies in the U.S. as early as middle school.
These high school students in Beijing are taking their summer holiday seriously, preparing for school exams.
But when the new school term starts, some of them will be travelling to the US, where they're already enrolled in high school.
Aurora Guo is one such student. She is only 16, but has been studying at an elite private boarding school in Philadelphia for two years.
"I'm in Philly, the Baldwin School. And, yeah, I like the US, because I can learn more over there than just studying and preparing for tests in China," she says.
"I've been there for three years.. not completely used to it, but I think I will be fine," he says.
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