A record number of Chinese students are enrolling in American primary and secondary schools, public and private, according to new figures from the Department of Homeland Security, many with the goal of getting an edge in U.S. college admissions. As WSJ's Miriam Jordan reports:

The number of Chinese K-12 students rose 290% to 34,578 as of November from 8,857 five years ago, according to data collected by the Student Exchange and Visitor Program, a DHS unit that tracks foreigners on student visas and the schools they attend.

Chinese students now make up roughly half of the 60,815 foreign pupils in U.S. high schools and the 6,074 in primary schools.

To be sure, the number of Chinese K-12 students in the U.S. is a tiny fraction of the total. There were 49.7 million students in U.S. public elementary and high schools in the 2013-14 school year, the latest data available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the Department of Education.

The surge in young Chinese pupils, some just 10 years old, comes as older students from the country continue to flock to the U.S. for higher education. There are now 360,091 Chinese students at U.S. universities, up from 330,209 in November 2014, according to SEVP. International students of all nations make up about 5% of American university students.

Read the full story on WSJ.com.

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