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First of all, you need to discern between Hong Kong and China. In the mainland, people who make $10,000 per year are considered wealthy. In Hong Kong, the average citizen earns roughly the same amount of money as a person in the US. Despite a booming economy, mainlanders are not very sophisticated. Aside from the few barons we discuss, most could barely afford the plane ticket to the United States and would never imagine attending a US university.</p>
<p>Second of all, students in Hong Kong are usually well informed regarding US universities. Most from my experience do know about UCLA and Berkeley. Even my mother who is in her 50s knew about UCLA before she immigrated to the United States. UCLA is particularly well known (arguably more so than Berkeley) because many students from Hong Kong actually know people who come to the US end up attending the university.</p>
<p>They usually choose UCLA over USC (despite USC probably being the better value at roughly the same price) because the university has more Asians. The Asians at USC also tend to be less fobby. -.-</p>