WHILE some 50,000 12th graders in Shanghai are cramming for China’s annual college admission exam, the gaokao, in June, some more fortunate peers have already secured entry into colleges and universities abroad and are breezing through their final year in high school.

Even though tuition overseas can be 50 times more than in Chinese institutes of higher learning, the lure of studying abroad is encouraging a growing number of Shanghai high school students to study in international curriculum programs.

A report released by the China and Internationalization think tank said 274,439 Chinese students were studying in US schools in the 2013-14 school year, up 16.5 percent from the previous year. About two in five of those students were undergraduates, compared with just under a third in 2010.