When Hu Chen, a first-year engineering student, came to Harvard right after graduating from Tsinghua University in Beijing, he not only faced an academic barrier, but a cultural one as well.

"For a person out of college, it's hard to take the initiative, but you must be very confident. Another thing is the language barrier," he says. "Here, every student is very bright and is trying to be the best, so it's very competitive."

And while Chen has faced many of the cultural dilemmas that the dozens of Chinese graduate students studying science at Harvard see daily, he says that he has not had the time to dwell on them.

"I think right now I'm just trying to figure out what interests me," he says. "Sometimes I feel lonely, homesick, but I certainly don't regret coming here."

As part of the second largest foreign group studying at Harvard, and the U.S. in general, Chinese graduate students continue to grow in size in the United State at a rapid rate.

According to a Sept. 5, 1996 article in Nature magazine, there were 120,000 scholars and students from mainland China in the U.S., the vast majority having arrived since 1980.

By the early 1990s, the number of science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded to Chinese in the U.S. exceeded the number awarded in China itself, the article said. Chinese students also became the single largest group of foreign students in the U.S., receiving 2,751 Ph.D.s in 1995, about 10 percent of the total.

Harvard has mirrored the national trend.

According to Director of the Harvard International Office Seamus Malin, there are 165 Chinese students in the University, 96 of whom are in GSAS. They comprise the second largest foreign group in GSAS.

In an era when science jobs are drying up even in the U.S., Chinese graduate students are faced with the question of whether they should stay in the United States to pursue a career or return to their homeland.

Chinese graduate students such as Xiaobing Chen, a third-year graduate student in biophysics from Langzhou, say they decided to study science in the United States because there are more opportunities for them.

"Like a lot of Chinese students, I wanted to come to the U.S. because it's advanced in a variety of areas, particularly science and technology," he said. "I wanted to be in an environment where I could develop myself."

Chen added that another consideration was the increase in job opportunities that came from studying in the U.S.

Another key consideration for Karen Liu, a sixth-year student in immunology, was Harvard's fame and prestige.

"In China, anyone knows the name Harvard," she says. "But you have to be another scientist to know, say, Caltech."