Wang Anni, a senior student from the No 1 Middle School in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, chats with an admission officer from a US university during the recruitment fair held at the school on March 27. [Photo/njzy.net]

A recruitment fair for outstanding Chinese students got underway at the No 1 Middle School in Nanjing, Jiangsu province on March 27.

The event was initiated by 20 prestigious universities in the United States, including the University of California-Irvine (UC Irvine) and Hofstra University.

From the school’s most important majors to scholarship application procedures, a multitude of questions of the highest concern were raised by the students and their parents.

Liu Xianglin, an admission officer from UC Irvine, said that one of the school’s educational strengths was that a host of academic “super brains”, including some Nobel Prize winners, are among the faculty.

“That’s why the school is so popular with overseas students,” he said. “About 100,000 students are applying for international studies at UC Irvine next year, a year-on-year growth of 20 percent.”

He also expressed the school’s preference for students with special talent. “If you are good at playing games, you can also win a scholarship,” Liu said, citing a student who won a $100,000 scholarship by defeating all the League of Legends players across the US.