A growing number of South Korean students are going to an English-speaking country as teenagers to escape from the grueling, test-oriented Korean schools in hopes of gaining entry into American universities. American colleges and universities are starting to see more of these "early study abroad students," as they are called in South Korea. This article reports on the trend of early study abroad students in the United States, which began to take off after 2000 as the Korean middle class grew and the education system became more competitive. In many Asian countries, a diploma from an American university has long been a prize that helps advance careers and family status. Now, Koreans see the degrees as a way out of the country's education rat race, says Dr. Jae Hoon Lim, an assistant education professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Families send their children abroad so they can become fluent in English and have more job choices in an increasingly globalized society. The hope is that the students can either come back to Korea for jobs at multinational companies or stay overseas.