The latest generation of young Chinese students heading overseas have a wealth of study options unimaginable to their predecessors, as Zhao Xinying and Zhang Yue report from Beijing.

In common with many of his peers, when Pan Li left China to study in the United States in 1993, the word "choice" wasn't really in his lexicon when considering his course of study.

Pan, now 53, came from a science background; having originally studied for a bachelor's in aerospace technology in 1978, just a year after China resumed the gaokao, or national college entrance exam. He later moved on to postgraduate study at the Dalian Institute of Mechanics before traveling to New York to take up a full scholarship at the Stevens Institute of Technology.