Overseas students younger, more diverse

They are all eyeing an enormous market as more and more Chinese parents prefer to send their children abroad for study at an early age.

One example is Shen Haining, father of a 16-year-old daughter, who enrolled in an Australian high school a semester ago.

"She can immerse in the English environment and adapt to the local environment easier, which allows her to live in Australia more comfortably afterwards," the father said.

Wendy Buxton, director of the international programs at Immanuel College, a private school in Adelaide, Australia, said it is important for schools to provide multiple choices for students to help them grow.

Buxton told China Daily that Chinese students from her schools followed different paths after graduation.

"Some of them went to vocational schools and then transferred to universities. Others were admitted to top universities worldwide," she said.

She still remembers one of her Chinese students as "an excellent and smart" girl.

"She studied nursing at first and then majored in accounting at a university," she said.

"She now works in an international hospital in Shanghai. With both knowledge in nursing and medical management, no wonder her career is great," Buxton said.

Last year, nearly 400,000 Chinese students went abroad, up more than 17 percent from 2011, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education.

In addition to the rapid growth, the trend is an increasing number of students going abroad at an early age, and their choices have become more diverse, according to a 2012 report on Chinese studying abroad.