The admission standards of Chinese and foreign universities differ. Most high school students in China can not simultaneously handle China's College Entrance Examination and qualifying courses and exams of foreign universities very well, so it is better for students to choose one or the other, said Wang.

Li Taibo, the science student of Beijing who achieved the highest score during the 2010 College Entrance Examination, also applied to 11 U.S. universities, but was not admitted to any of them, reported the Beijing Evening News in mid-August.

Ruminating on what went wrong with his application, Li thought that he started the preparation too late and was in a hurry, so his Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score was not high enough. Moreover, he did not know how to present himself adequately in application materials.

International schools will prepare students better, said Wang. Records of New Oriental International High School (Yangzhou) show that its entire first batch of graduates in 2009 was admitted to the top 100 U.S. universities, and half of them entered top 50 U.S. universities.

Yu Minhong, the founder of the New Oriental Education and Technology Group, said in an interview that under the education evaluation system in China, students have to do well in every course to succeed, and those who do exceptionally well only in one particular course are often eliminated by the system.

International high schools are test fields for education reform in China, Yu said. He said that the newly launched New Oriental International High School (Beijing), which is under Yu's Group, will combine the desirable things in both Chinese and Western curriculums.

New Oriental International High School will introduce students to foreign cultures, cultivate the innovative spirit of students and encourage them to take part in community activities and pursue their own interests, Wang said.

High schools in China have greater autonomy to diversify or internationalize their curriculums. Regular high schools are encouraged to diversify their curriculums and funding sources, and to develop specialty programs, said the National Outline for Medium- and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-20) promulgated in late July. The outline will guide education reform for the next 10 years.

Wang Boqing, President of MyCOS HR Digital Information Co. and a well-known education expert, said that the increasingly large amount of Chinese students studying abroad suggests that there are problems with China's education system. If teaching quality does not improve, more will go elsewhere.

Wang said that China's undergraduate education still lags behind the world's top undergraduate programs. As the Chinese public's income increases, Chinese students will vote with their feet and go to the best universities abroad. The appreciation of the Chinese currency against the U.S. dollar and euro has also made overseas education relatively more affordable.

Hefty costs

More than 500 institutes of higher learning and education agencies from 33 countries attended the 15th China International Education Exhibition Tour held this March and hosted by the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchanges (CSCSE). Exhibitors are from traditional destinations for international students such as Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Chen Yao, an international education consultant, told CCTV that now it is much easier for self-financed students to get a U.S. visa. In the first half of this year, all her clients got their student visa the first time they applied.

Che Weimin, an official from CSCSE responsible for coordinating the exhibition tour, said that the financial crisis made it desirable for many foreign schools to attract more Chinese students to study there.

International students contribute $17.8 billion to the U.S. economy, through their expenditures on tuition and living expenses, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Actually, international high schools are not cheap. The total expenses at New Oriental International High School (Beijing) are 90,000 yuan ($13,235) per year, close to the tuition of many U.S. universities.

Students will continue to spend money in foreign schools. The average tuition and living cost of an undergraduate Chinese student in the United States is about 320,000 yuan ($47,000), according to an estimate by the Beijing New Oriental Vision Consulting Co.

There are reports that some young Chinese students could not adjust well to student life on foreign campuses. When asked to compare whether it is better to go to foreign schools for undergraduate studies or graduate studies, Gao Lu, President of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Hong Kong-based paper Wen Wei Po that younger students usually could learn foreign languages faster, yet for those not very independent, it might be better to complete their undergraduate studies in China.

In the meantime, as more and more Chinese with foreign degrees return to China, a foreign degree no longer guarantees a good job. In a survey conducted by World Human Resources Lab, a Beijing-based consulting firm, 35 percent of the respondents, who returned to China with foreign degrees, reported difficulty in finding a job.