Chinese face tougher hurdles for Ivy League schools

Chinese students applying for undergraduate programs at top US universities, especially those in the Ivy League, are increasingly facing tough competition, Chinese education consultants said.

"We have felt the difficulty in helping students apply for the top universities in the US this year, as the competition for admission to these universities has been the fiercest in recent years," said Wang Jing, director of the US study consultants of Chivast Education International, a Beijing-based overseas study consultancy under the Education Ministry's Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange.

"We've found that students should score higher than 110 (out of 120) on the TOEFL and 2,200 (out of 2,400) in the SAT to secure their admission to prestigious American universities. But in previous years, more than 105 in TOEFL and more than 2,100 on the SAT was adequate," he said.