Have you been to top tier high schools in the US? They’re filled with international students. It’s been like this for decades. Now you have that in preschools. Look up any elite schools in NYC, SF, etc.

Americans are simply priced out of these programs. Why? Because international students pay ALL CASH. If you’re running a mid-tier schools, would you give 20 slots to American students who cannot pay full tuition or give them out to international students paying full tuition while increasing your “diversity” score for school ranking?

These are private schools right? Sure, I agree. The well-off private schools and the select few public schools in rich areas are exemplary.

Private schools are not the norm though, and public schools like that are even rarer.

I agree that America's education system has higher variance.

Nope. I am talking about both private and public schools. Go to any top tier school districts and you’re going to find these students. Just want to be clear that I am not criticizing these students. I am criticizing the OP narrative that US students are bad at math and sciences. We have the best schools period. Not even close. We churn out the best talent. Again not even close.

I don't really get what you're saying.

The US is a large place, and the fact that great highschools exist doesn't tell us anything about the distribution of highschool quality, except for that one fact.

Yeah K12 and higher ed are vastly vastly different. There's also many reasons for many foreign students at US universities that are unrelated to academics:

- we have the best universities in the world, and lots of them

- our universities are accessible because English is the most taught/spoken language in the world

- foreign student population is coming from a pool of 7.7bb people, whereas domestic is only 0.3bb, a 25x differential.

- foreign students pay full tuition, which can be several times that of in-state tuition at state schools, so universities seek out foreign students to pay the bills