Since the beginning of the two-month summer vacation in July, 16-year-old Wang Kai has devoted all his spare time to a training course at Beijing New Oriental, a leading Chinese provider of English training.

"I am preparing for the U.S. college entrance examination," Wang said. His target is to get enrolled in one of the top ten U.S. universities.

The "U.S. college entrance examination", as Wang and his classmates call it, is otherwise known as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT).

With hundreds of thousands of Chinese college students taking TOEFL and GRE to get access to postgraduate programs at U.S. universities, more and more Chinese high school students are pinning their hopes on the SAT for undergraduate studies.

"High school students have realized that SAT opens an alternative window for higher education to China's college entrance examination," said Li Hongqiao from New Oriental, who is in charge of SAT training.

In 2003, Beijing New Oriental started SAT training in Shanghai with 50 trainees. In 2005, the business extended to Beijing. This year more than 1,500 high school students have enrolled in the Beijing training courses.

"Many of the trainees are from key high schools in Beijing and they are eager to enter prestigious universities in the United States," Li said.

Statistics from China's Ministry of Education show a record 9.52 million people applied to enter Chinese colleges this year, with 8.8 million taking the nationwide college entrance examination.

The annual entrance examination, which took place on June 7 and 8, is regarded as the fiercest academic competition in the world.

Universities and colleges this year will enroll 2.6 million students for a four-year higher education course -- just one place for every four candidates. Admission depends solely on the results of the annual examination.

To students like Wang, the SAT offers more hope.

"You have several chances to take the SAT in a year. Besides, the SAT score is only a reference rather than a decisive factor. The student's overall performance in school as well as teachers' recommendations are all taken into consideration," Wang said.

Along with SAT, the American College Test (ACT), another widely accepted U.S. college entrance exam, is also gaining ground with Chinese high school examinees.

Since May 2005, over 2,000 Chinese students have registered for ACT training courses and taken the test, according to Friday's Beijing News.

Britain, Australia, Canada, Japan and the Republic of Korea are some of the options for Chinese high school students who want to study abroad.

Xiong Yutong, a staff member at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, said the embassy did not have exact figures for Chinese high school students enrolled in U.S universities.

She said that in theory U.S. universities can recruit as many foreign students as they want.

The increasing popularity of foreign college entrance tests in China has sparked worries of a "student brain drain" as universities outside the Chinese mainland, a sector that was once off-limits, are gradually being allowed to enroll more Chinese undergraduate students.

This summer, more than 30,000 students applied to study in six Hong Kong-based universities that could take only 1,000 freshmen from the mainland.

A couple of the best students in China have turned down offers of prestigious mainland universities to go and study in Hong Kong. The lure of high quality teaching, generous scholarships and bright job prospects are often too great.

Mainland newspapers are loudly protesting that the mainland's top two universities, Beijing University and Qinghua University, once "the holy grail" for top students, might start to decline.

Education experts urged China's universities to make effective reforms to boost their level of education amid concerns that the most talented high school students are choosing to study outside the Chinese mainland.

"It's no good just worrying about a brain drain," said Li from New Oriental. "China's higher education resources are too limited for the huge number of high school graduates. Why aren't there more opportunities for them to get a better education?"

Other experts believe the outflow of talented high school students is quite natural and that the trend will help improve Chinese higher education.

Chu Chaohui, a researcher with the central institute of education and science under the Ministry of Education, said there is an oversupply in China's higher education market.

"Chinese high school students' interest in SAT and ACT will push Chinese universities to reform their policies, management and tuition so as to become more competitive," Chu said.

Editor: Wing