How do Chinese students feel about leaving China and stepping into a foreign country? What are they looking forward to? What are they worried about? We spoke with six Chinese students who are about to embark on their university journey stateside to find out all this and more!

You’re going overseas for university/college! What are you most excited about?

Cyrus Wang, Emory University: “The thing that excites me the most is the complete control of my life. You are free to arrange your own schedule and time, and decide how to spend your money. This is quite a challenge, but it really makes me excited.”

Siyu Lan, Mount Holyoke College: “I [cannot]wait to live in the beautiful campus and supportive community. Also, I am looking forward to new enlightenment from peers and professors.”

Lucy Liu, University of Washington: “I spent high school in the US, but I am still excited to meet more people, to embrace new cultures, and to have new experiences.”

Mei 许李梅朵, St. John’s College: “Yes, I’m more than excited. St. John’s College is my dream school, I’ve always [looked]forward to [studying]in the college. After one year of gap year, I can’t wait to go back to the campus and absorb more knowledge.”

Is there anything that you are worried about?

Editor’s note: Unlike in China, COVID-19 is still raging in many countries such as the US, and many of the interviewees expressed concerns about how the pandemic may affect their studies and daily lives.

Siyu Lan, Mount Holyoke College: “I am worried about COVID-19 not only because it is a crisis, but since I might struggle a lot when I live in a turbulent environment. If I am infected accidentally, it will be disturbed if I couldn’t keep up with the heavy workload.”

Anna, Mount Holyoke College: “My biggest worry is still the Covid epidemic in the US and other places around the world, while other common worries are like how to adjust to the different lifestyles or culture shock when you beginning your first year abroad. “

Candance Wang, University of Notre Dame: “Notre Dame isn’t very international, nor is Indiana in general, so I would definitely struggle at first to adjust to the local culture, such as the food and communication. The lack of parents would mean I cannot depend on them to solve issues for me, such as passport issues.”

How different do you think your life will be compared to in China and overseas?

Anna, Mount Holyoke College: “Studying overseas will definitely be a little different from my life here in China. There are many new concepts and cultures for me to learn, new friends to meet, and even moving to a place 10,000 kilometers far from my home itself is a big challenge for me. This new lifestyle is likely to be very different compared to what I’m living with right now.”

Cyrus Wang, Emory University: “The way of socializing will be quite different, mainly with the language and cultural differences. At the same time, lifestyles will also be quite different. For example, driving is the main way to go out, and the food delivery industry is not very developed.”

Mei 许李梅朵, St. John’s College: “The significant difference will be living without my family. Although I’ve experienced living alone back in the Netherlands, but I still think that will be a challenge for me. The difference in food will also be another factor [of]concern. Luckily, I learned how to cook Chinese dishes during the quarantine.”

Do you think you will return back to China after graduation?

Editor’s note: One had a definite answer of “yes,” while others indicated a preference for returning to China due to its familiarity, as well as the countries’ opportunities for growth.

Mei 许李梅朵, St. John’s College: “Definitely. China is my home, and I’m sure after six years of study experience in the US, I will come back and help my country.”

Siyu Lan, Mount Holyoke College: “Yeah, I think I will return since [there]will be more opportunities and advantages for me to living in a familiar and vibrant environment. I could achieve some of my goals here in China. However, I’m also interested in living in different countries since life is a journey for me.”

Cyrus Wang, Emory University: “I personally prefer to return to China after getting my graduate degree. I will be more comfortable with the domestic living and working environment, and I will have more friends and relatives in China.”

Candance Wang, University of Notre Dame: “I would like to return to China, but I probably won’t, because I have an American passport, and my brother also lives there.”

Lucy Liu, University of Washington: “That is still in consideration since I haven’t even started university yet. It would mostly depend on which side is better and provides more advantages and opportunities for me. However, currently, I am leaning slightly more towards returning back to China.”

Anna, Mount Holyoke College: “I haven’t made any too specific plans about my future studies like what field I want to focus on, but I believe I will continue to get a master’s degree in the next couple of years. Ideally, I might return back to China after graduation and have an individual workplace or do some actual practice in psychology.”

How would you feel about traveling to a foreign land for an extended stay? Comment below!

KEEP READING: “Choosing a College Is Like Dating,” and Other Insights From Graduate Summit 2021

Images: Unsplash

Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview is a boy’s day and full-time boarding school based in Sydney, Australia. Riverview is holding an information session at the Four Seasons Hotel on Tuesday 13 October, from 2-4pm.

A Catholic school, in the Jesuit tradition, Riverview educates boys through Years 5-12. On Tuesday, the Rector Fr Ross Jones SJ, the Principal Dr Paul Hine and the Director of Boarding Mr Guy Masters will be speak about boarding and enrollment at Riverview.

Riverview was founded in 1880 by an Irish Jesuit, Fr Joseph Dalton SJ. The Jesuits are a Catholic religious order, approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. The tradition of Jesuit education began in Messina in Sicily in 1548, and rapidly spread across the world. Today Jesuits educate approximately 2.5 million students in 80 countries.

To find out about the tradition and ethos at Riverview, and to attend the information session, contact Christine Zimbulis at cszimbulis@riverview.nsw.edu.au or on +61 2 9882 8595

Photos: Courtesy of Riverview

Between its heartland location, pep rallies, and vast network of sororities and fraternities, the University of Illinois may appear as American as apple pie. However, a recent Inside Higher Ed article highlights a new trend that’s reshaping this once quintessentially Yankee institution: a massive influx of students from China.

According to the article, which was entitled “The University of China at Illinois," the university has more Chinese students than any other college in America.

That distinction is especially startling considering that the number of Chinese university students enrolling in US schools has jumped fivefold in the last 14 years.

Illinois’ figures are even more surprising because they were not led by grad students (the once dominant PRC student body), but rather undergraduates. Compared to 37 Chinese undergrads in 2000, the University of Illinois now counts 2,898. That means 10 percent of the university’s freshman class is made up of mainland Chinese, surpassing the number of American freshmen from any single state except Illinois and California.

The large number of Chinese students have already impacted the university in a variety of ways. Some of those changes are amusing, from a student club that has created its own version of the CCTV dating show Fei Cheng Wu Rao to a heated debate about the merits of white rice over brown.

The demographic shift has also lead to a change in services, such as vastly expanded ESL resources, several orientation sessions in China, and even an airport shuttle.

However, the article also highlights the prejudices that these Chinese students are facing, not only from their Caucasian peers but also from their Asian-American co-eds.

See the full article here.

Photo: Illinois.edu

Ivy League schools are notoriously elitist, but some of China’s poorest students will have an unprecedented chance to partake in that top notch education, thanks in part to a pair of generous Beijing philanthropists.

According to a recent Daily Mail article, Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, a couple who made their millions developing real estate such as the Soho properties in Beijing, have donated $100 million to America’s top schools in 2014. Ten million dollars of that offering will go to Yale and $15 million of it will be given to Harvard, in order to help cover costs for economically marginalized Chinese students that would normally be shut out from such upper echelons.

On top of that, the American State Department’s EducationUSA program has been equally generous to prospective international students as of late, launching funds worth millions of dollars that cover everything from application fees to interview transpiration costs. The Mail article added that EducationUSA already has eight advisers in Beijing, with plans to send four more to Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenyang latter this year.

The article went on to describe these initiatives as “refocused recruitment strategies” that offer the university system more “economic diversity.” It then delved into a compelling anecdote about one student, Yupei Guo, who came from the sort of average background that could never have granted her such opportunities prior to these new initiatives. Her story is surely one of the many that point to a brighter future for such long deprived Chinese youngsters.

That, of course, doesn’t mean that the PRC hasn’t made its own efforts to address such students’ needs. An essay published in Forbes last November pointed out that China has doubled its total number of universities in the past decade. Meanwhile, its number of post secondary grads in that same timeframe has had a staggering quadruple increase to seven million, dwarfing America’s total of three million.

However, the Forbes author also wrote that: “With few spots available at top schools, Chinese students increasingly are heading to America for higher education… They worry about finding good jobs and are irritated by government restrictions on their freedom.  For many the U.S. offers the yellow brick road to the fabled Emerald City.  This educational exodus benefits Americans as well as Chinese.”

A recent Bloomberg article crunched the numbers of this massive post secondary migration. It noted that there has been a whopping 75 percent increase in the number of Chinese students enrolling at American universities. It added that: “Students from China made up the largest contingent among the 886,052 foreign students last year, with 31 percent…”

Those figures are sure to only increase, now that the aforementioned “refocused recruitment strategies” are in full swing and average, highly deserving students like Guo are taking advantage of them.

An article in the Guardian recently asked, “Why aren’t Chinese students at UK universities getting top degrees?” A recent study of undergraduate students found that compared to 52% of students from outside the European Union who scored a 2:1 or higher (2:1 is the second highest degree you can achieve under the British undergraduate degree classification), only 42% of students from China did. And this is compared to an overall 68% of students who achieved a 2:1 or higher.

Why is this? Zhiqi Wang and Ian Crawford — authors of a study that compared the average marks and final degree classification of just over 100 British and Chinese accounting and finance first-degree students who enrolled in 2008 — cites two factors:

First, Chinese students fail to adapt their approaches to learning and so their performance declines in the later years of a degree when the complexity of the work increases. And, second, while the UK and Chinese education systems are not that different, the strong focus in China on study and achieving qualifications means many young people enrol in higher education due to pressure from family or the jobs market rather than their own motivation.

There’s no question that studying overseas is difficult. This is why we believe adjustment is so important and why we wrote a guide to help parents and students understand what to expect of the overseas study experience. Whether socially or academically, knowing what others will expect of you will be crucial to helping you perform better, if not well. As Cristina Iannelli, professor of education and social stratification at the University of Edinburgh, observes “we accept all these students but we don’t know much about them. "I see some of them struggling because they really don’t know before coming here exactly what is expected of them."

Find out more here.

This blog first appeared in Prep Beijing on December 4 and was written by Alicia Lui.

Alicia Lui is a co-founder at Prep Beijing!, a coaching company focusing on core soft skills such as effective communication, social and emotional skills, etiquette, critical thinking and leadership skills. Prior to founding Prep Beijing! She has worked in management consulting and in banking. She holds and MBA from INSEAD and Bachelor’s from University of Chicago

Photo courtesy of wikimedia commons.