It starts with a video projection of a song from the 1972 musical movie Cabaret. 

Yubing Shi looks amused... but also a little puzzled. 

The song finishes. The professor explains that the movie is set in Germany in the early nineteen thirties and that it's about the dangers of financial excess. 

Yubing says the professors at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University are good at engaging foreign students.

中国留美学生面临的挑战

"I think in Georgetown I'm feeling more inclusive in most of my classes. And we have different students from across the world. And I think the professor is used to, they know how to include everyone in the class discussion even though sometimes the topic is hard. But you can still bring your own background or understanding on certain topics."

The ability to adapt to American college culture is the key area of discussion among many of the Chinese students here. 

It's now more tempting than ever for Chinese students to avoid much of the work of adapting to a new culture and language, according to Peggy Blumenthal at the Institute of International Education.

"I think the challenge has been very large numbers of students who then tend to huddle together a little bit more than if there were just a few on campus. And so the challenge really has been to make sure that they integrate with the rest of the campus rather than just stay among themselves."

Yubing began her US undergraduate degree in 2009, but since then she's witnessed a dramatic rise in the numbers of Chinese students at that level. 

Now there are 304,000 Chinese students, representing 31% of all international students in the US.

Now as an experienced graduate student, she's worried that some of the larger public universities may not be providing enough support. 

"I think my biggest concern is that within some public institutions which recruit a lot of Chinese students. But they are not well prepared and they don't know , they don't set up a friendly environment for them to get engaged. And since they are just turned to be 18, there are lot of things for them to learn, it's the responsibility of the university to lead them, to sort of guide them to get involved."

Universities in the United States are responding to the surge, by providing additional language assistance and finding creative ways to encourage integration in class and in residential settings. 

And Peggy Blumenthal says the overall process of adaptation is ongoing.

"Many colleges and universities are developing linkages and partnerships with Chinese colleges and universities, for exchanges both ways, to send students, to send faculty to China, joint research. So this isn't just a matter of getting a lot of Chinese students and kind of tossing them in with everybody else. It's really trying to deeply understand how the two-way relationship will work." 

The influx of Chinese students certainly does provide considerable financial benefit to the US education system. 

Chinese students mostly pay the full tuition. That helps universities to provide scholarships to more American students who need help to pay for their education.