Jay Lin is the embodiment of the American dream -- and what is increasingly a Chinese dream.

Originally from Wenzhou in eastern China, he moved to New York City as a teenager. After earning degrees from Ivy League universities -- Cornell and Columbia -- he secured a comfortable job in a bucolic town in Connecticut.

Now he is helping others in China follow his path, where the desire for elite U.S. education is alive and well.

In the last decade, mainland Chinese have reshaped the international student body at U.S. colleges and universities, notably at Ivy League institutions. In the 2009-2010 academic year, China surpassed traditional "study abroad" heavyweights like Canada, India and South Korea, to lead international enrollment across U.S. higher education, according to the Institute of International Education. The U.S.-based institute's most recent figures reveal that mainland Chinese students increased 23% to more than 723,000 in the 2010-11 academic year.

A rising generation of affluent students

While Chinese students traditionally went abroad when they failed to secure a place at a top-tier local university, the best students are now forgoing elite Chinese universities to study in the United States, according to Lin, now academic director of Ivy Labs Education, an admissions consultancy in Beijing.

Many Chinese are seeking a higher quality of education that will train them to become independent and creative, he said, and they see the world's top-ranked universities are in the United States.

China's economic reforms and "opening-up" that began in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping gave rise to the first major generation of students, who were generally reliant on scholarships to study in the United States, according to Chen Shuangye, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Department of Educational Administration and Policy.

Coinciding with China's rapid economic growth, a distinctive second generation emerged in the mid-1990s comprising much more affluent students, Chen said. "There is a great increase in the phenomenon because (mainland Chinese) don't rely on scholarships anymore."

Starting early at boarding schools

The factors driving mainland Chinese to study in the United States come into play much earlier, Lin said, noting an influx of foreign Chinese students into private U.S. secondary schools, starting around 2005.

Chinese parents send their children to private U.S. high schools as a "strategic decision" to strengthen their candidacy for elite U.S. universities, Lin said. A growing number also want their children to lead happier lives rather than have them consumed by preparing for the "gaokao" in China -- the one-time, high-stakes national university entrance examination that is the sole determinant of admission.

"The goal of education in mainland China is to prepare you to take the gaokao. Everything else is secondary. In China, you would put the gaokao in the center...whereas...in American education, you put the student in the center, and everything else serves the best interests of the student. It's not exclusively about (getting into) college."

While U.S. boarding schools desire Chinese students both for their dollars and diversity, they walk a "very fine line...when it comes to recruiting Chinese students," said Lin, who assisted with admissions during his tenure teaching at Connecticut's Cheshire Academy.

Boarding schools typically admit four to five students of any foreign nationality per grade level, with international students comprising up to 20% of the overall student body, Lin said. With about 100 students for each of the four grade levels, this means admitting a maximum of 20 mainland Chinese, or five percent of the student body.

"A school could easily fill itself with all Chinese students, but no school's going to do that...It's a double-edged sword -- if you have too many Chinese, then the Chinese will stop coming to your school, and also, Americans will stop coming to your school."

Driving international enrollment at U.S. universities

By virtue of their size, U.S. universities can accept a much higher number of Chinese students than boarding schools.

Since 1999, China was the second leading place of origin for international students at Harvard, trailing only Canada. Its student numbers steadily increased to lead Harvard's international enrollment since the last academic year, with 686 students currently enrolled (nearly 16% of the international student body.)

China similarly dominates international enrollment at other Ivy League schools, including Yale and Princeton.