The economic and cultural adaptation of China's study in the United States at a younger age is prominent.

Foreign media said that more and more Chinese parents decided to send their children to the United States for high school education in order to better apply for American universities. But is the reality really what they expected?
According to a report by the Financial Times on June 20th, more and more Chinese students are studying in high schools in the United States, which can be seen from the data.
According to the data of Chinese Ministry of Education in March this year, the number of Chinese students studying abroad continued to rise in 2015, exceeding 500,000 for the first time. According to the new data of UNESCO)3 in March, the United States is the choice destination for Chinese students to study abroad, and the number of international students far exceeds that of Britain, Australia and Canada.
According to the Open Door Report 2015 published by the American Institute of Education (IIE), from 2007 to 2015, the number of Chinese students studying in the United States kept a double-digit percentage growth every year, and for the first time in the 2014-2015 academic year, the number exceeded 300,000, accounting for 31.2% of the total international students in the United States.
When a large number of students go to the United States to study, the composition of Chinese students has changed.
According to the data of the US Department of Homeland Security and the American Institute of Education (IIE), in recent years, the number of Chinese students going to the United States for undergraduate and postgraduate studies is still large, and the number of undergraduate students surpassed that of graduate students for the first time last year, but the growth rate of both of them has slowed down. In contrast, the number of people who choose to attend high school has grown strongly in the past 10 years.
From 2004 to 2015, the number of Chinese students holding F-1 international student visas studying in high schools in the United States has increased from 433 to 43,000, an increase of nearly 100 times in 11 years.
Many parents of Chinese students have decided to let their children receive high school education in the United States, in order to better apply for American universities.
Yang Zhen from Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, who is currently studying at the University of Alabama (UA) in the United States, before taking the entrance examination for senior secondary schools, his father wanted his son to go to the United States to study in high school, in order to make it easier for him to apply for American universities in the future.
He admitted that he was not very good at English since childhood. The TOEFL score was 120, but he only got 70 points when he graduated from high school, and his grades were not excellent. However, some universities in the United States stipulate that if you have attended high school in the United States or other English-speaking countries for one to three years, or have obtained their high school graduation certificate, you can apply for university without TOEFL scores (you still need to take the American standardized test SAT). Yang Zhen's high school in America means one more chance to break into a good American university.
"Like my (English) grades, if I stay in China, I can't get into the UA I am studying now," he said. When he first came to America, he couldn't even order takeout in English, but studying in America in high school improved his English a lot.
Maybe studying in high school in the United States has a chance to improve the competitiveness of applying for American universities, but not every Chinese family can afford the cost.
According to the regulations of the US Department of Homeland Security, most international students with F-1 international student visas can only study in American public high schools for one year. If they want their children to get an American high school degree, most Chinese parents choose to let their children attend American private high schools with higher tuition fees. According to the report of American Institute of International Education (IIE) IIE)2014, 95% of international high school students who hold U.S. F-1 international student visa attend private high schools, while only 5% attend public high schools.
According to the statistics of the National Center for Education Statistics, the average tuition fee of private high schools in the United States is about 13,000 US dollars per year, while international students have to pay an unlimited amount of additional fees on this basis, while the tuition fee of boarding schools is even higher, ranging from about 10,000 to 60,000 US dollars per year, which is many times higher than the tuition and miscellaneous fees that ordinary high school students in Chinese mainland have to pay from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per year.
In addition to the family economic pressure, the hard work and growth cost behind the small international students are also the lessons that they have to face alone.
Wang Qin (a pseudonym) from Nanjing went to a top ten private high school in Boston, USA in 2010. After graduating from high school, she received admission letters from famous universities such as Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University and Oxford University, and finally chose to study in Oxford, England.
Wang Qin admits that studying in American high school has improved her academic ability, but she thinks that this experience is not conducive to her personal growth during her youth. Due to the different cultures between China and the United States, there are differences in interpersonal communication. "To be honest, the social experience is not very pleasant." She even thinks that if she becomes a mother several years later, she won't choose to send her children abroad to attend high school alone.
In addition to the need to adapt to interpersonal communication, adolescent children who lack proper supervision by their parents may also have out-of-order behaviors. Yang Zhen said that some friends around him went abroad to study in private schools alone. Because of the free environment and some living expenses managed by themselves, they began to buy luxury goods, and classmates compared with each other, and some even neglected their studies.
When Chinese boys and girls leave the door of domestic schools and enter an unfamiliar country, can a foreign high school diploma bring the future that parents and students expect? The growth process of young international students may have surpassed their studies, which has become an issue that parents should pay close attention to.
(Editor: Robert)