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A former hotel in Milwaukee is now home to 170 Chinese teenage students

This segment originally aired Feb. 8, 2017, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

The number of Chinese students enrolling at American secondary schools is on the rise, and if the success of the Wisconsin International Academy is any indication, it will grow exponentially in the years ahead.

VICE News correspondent Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani visited the hotel-turned-academy in Milwaukee that’s now home to 170 Chinese teenagers. Students eat, sleep, and study here. For them, the academy is home, and it isn’t cheap — the average annual tuition is in the range of $40,000 to $50,000.

Nevertheless, these students have left their families on the other side of the world to study in the American Midwest with their sites on America’s best universities and hopes of a brighter future.