Which is important? Ranking or tuition?

I would say 10-20% of them have good English skills; about 40% adequate; about 40% inadequate. English skills are one thing, the other 2 main issues are: (1) cultural shocks, including home sick, and (2) no sense of purpose; doing it for parents, not really for themselves; thus, easily distracted by video games, etc.

Recently, my university started to figure out a better way to screen our international students. The average GPA of our international Chinese students is now close to that of our domestic students (note that survivor bias is more severe among international Chinese students because of lower graduation rate). Nevertheless, the distribution is still having a fat tail. This yields a higher drop out rate for international Chinese students than domestic students.

This may work for someone who intends to work/stay here in the US. However, the cost-benefit analysis is going to be different if the student concerned intends to go back to China to work as employers there WILL factor in their perception of prestige/ranking of US universities. And that perception is likely to be different than those of US employers so the student concerned would do well to find what they are and to account for them in his/her cost-benefit analysis.

This combined with the possibility the student may lose merit scholarship from the lower ranking school if he/she has a bad semester or two is likely to mean the cost/benefit ratio of going to the lower ranking school may be far less than it would be for a domestic American student.