"Hello my name is Michet, I come from France."
"How are you doing, I'm Michael, from New York."
"Hello I'm Andreas Martin, I'm from Denmark."
"My name is Luke. I am from Minnesota in the United States."
"My specialization is Chinese culture."
"I'm studying financial information systems."
"And I'm here for a semester studying finance."
"I study here to improve my putonghua and to improve my knowledge of Asia business."
"Studying here in Hong Kong has just been a lovely change, such a refreshing change."

The Chinese University of Hong Kong is one of the top schools in the city, and its student body is very diverse. Fifty foreigners are enrolled in its undergraduate program and every year 800 foreign exchange students come here for a semester or two. CUHK has partnerships with two hundred educational institutions around the world and its foreign students enrollment is going up.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong is nestled in the hills in Shatian. The school was founded in 1963 and is home to Hong Kong's only collegiate system. Students choose between six colleges; each college provides a framework for the student's academic and extracurricular life. The colleges have their own residence and dining halls, and organized seminars, community service programs, language training and extracurricular activities.

Mr. Lawrence Lau: "We are one of the only universities in Hong Kong certainly, but I think here in China, that has the collegiate system. Similar to Oxford and Cambridge. So after classes the students can get together at the colleges. There are activities. There's interaction with teachers and students, and among students. We think we want to provide education for the whole person."

Vice Chancellor Laurence Lau says the school's diversity contributes to students' education. CUHK has more than 9,000 full-time undergraduate students, of which about 1000 are non-local. The exchange program began in 1965 with the University of California and in the last few years its expanded rapidly.

The university's long-term goal is to have a quarter of its student-body come from outside Hong Kong. Eva-Maria Saur came here on exchange from the University of Heidelberg. She decided to stay at CUHK and get a bachelors degree in linguistics. Eva will graduate in two years.

Louis Bueno Bragado is from Ciudad Mante, Tamualipas in northeastern Mexico. He's studying to be an industrial engineer and here is on exchange. Eva and Louis have both moved from very different places to study in Hong Kong, and both have struggled with CUHK's rigorous coursework. Neither expected to spend so much time in the library.

Eva: "In general the university has this policy where you have a lot of assignments, so you have to do more for class. In Germany you can decide whether you want to work hard. But you can also decide not to work hard. But you will pass. So I think that Chinese in general are very hard-working. So it's good for me, because I got ambitious, and I wanted to be so good, so I also work very hard."

Louis: "At the beginning I thought it was odd. It was so easy. I just go to lecture and go back, there are not too many homeworks. And then the midterms and the first assignments. And I was like, oops, I don't know too much. But I've been doing ok."