[jsbrook]

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

You'd be surprised. There's an entire cottage industry of companies helping Asian students get to America to study and (mostly) learn English. The Inquirer recently did an article on all of the Catholic High Schools in the region who were converting old rectories and academic buildings to dorms to house Chinese students who were paying to board so that they could earn high school degrees in America...and presumably have a leg up on Mainland Chinese in terms of applying to US colleges.

This is just an extension of that business model. You know...you would go here for the same reasons Americans do...it's a good place to start out and then transfer to a traditional 4 year college. Not every Chinese student is a billionaire. Quite the opposite. It makes the aspiration of getting a U.S. education more attainable for even middle class Chinese who can get two years under their belts and then get that 4 year degree in 2 for half the price. Not to mention, competitive colleges are much more lax in their admission of transfer students than they are newly matriculated high school students. The reason being, of course, that those statistics (scores, etc) don't get tracked and reported in the same way they do for traditional matriculants. That's a huge selling point for someone (i.e. a foreigner) who wants a pedigree from a top school but might not be strong enough to get in at the first pass.

In essence...it will serve as a prep school of sorts for foreigners aiming to move on to other schools, IMO.

So, Step 1 of a two-step plan to then attend a 4 years U.S. college. Hmm...interesting.