A growing number of students at top private schools are turning their backs on British universities in favour of the US where they believe they will enjoy better facilities and will not be discriminated against because of their privileged background.
Some of the most famous schools in the country, including Millfield, Malvern College and St Paul's, have all confirmed a trend that headteachers say is also being driven by the appeal of a broader curriculum and the rising cost of British higher education.
Anthony Seldon, the influential headmaster of Wellington College, has even set a target of having a quarter of his students attending US universities by 2020. Currently 5 per cent of his leavers go to the US for higher education.
"It's being driven by parents who want something less parochial for their children and, rightly or wrongly, they feel the UK system is tilted against them. And I think that's something that can only get worse when Gordon Brown becomes prime minister," he said.
The chancellor's comments that an old school network had been responsible for denying a brilliant comprehensive school pupil a place at Oxford sparked outrage in 2000. While organisations representing private schools have accepted there is no evidence of "social engineering", many parents are yet to be convinced.
Lee Stetson, dean of ad-missions at the University of Pennsylvania, said the whole Ivy League had noticed an increasing "British tinge" in recent years. "At Penn the number of students from the UK has at least doubled over the last five years. UK students are now in the top four foreign countries, along with Canada, South Korea and Singapore, and it's a change we welcome."
Harvard has seen the British applicants rise from 107 for its class of 1990 with 13 being offered places, to 267 applying for the class of 2010 with 32 offered places.
Anselm Baker, a teacher at Millfield School, Somerset, who deals with student applications to US universities, said the rising cost of British higher education was making students concerned about the value for money they got from their degrees.
Students starting degrees at English universities this year will be charged up to £3,000 for each year of their course. "They're starting to think, 'If I'm going to have to pay for this then what else is available?' "
While the cost of an English university is still less than that in the US, students from less wealthy backgrounds can benefit handsomely from the Ivy League's "needs blind" ad-missions policies, which is concerned with getting only the brightest of students and subsidises poorer students if they are unable to cover their own costs. Harvard students with a household income of less than $60,000 (£32,000) do not have to contribute to their own costs. Half of the student body receives financial help.
A recent survey found that the private sector is far from being the exclusive preserve of the very rich, with most schools having bursary schemes.
Alan Ryan, warden of New College, Oxford, was surprised more students were not taking advantage of cut- price US degrees. He said students from a low-income family would get a US education rather more cheaply than an English one. "I think that I would have got as good an education today in contemporary Princeton as I did in 1960s Balliol. We simply don't have the resources in Oxford to offer students the sort of things that the Ivy League can do."
Mr Baker said that his students saw US universities as an attractive "fall-back option" for students who failed to get into their first choice of UK universities.
Jamie Michelson, a pupil studying the international baccalaureate at Malvern College, Worcestershire, said he would have to face a tough decision if he were offered places at Yale and Princeton as well as Oxford. "I think on balance though I would rather go to an American university because I think the name would sound better."
Elite US universities have stepped up their recruitment around the world in recent years in an attempt to develop a more international atmosphere on campuses. William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions, said: "The world is becoming a smaller place and we have to compete with universities around the world for the best students."
Admissions officials like A-levels, despite criticism in Britain that students specialise in a few subjects too early.
The increasingly international complexion of UK private schools is weakening traditional relationships with universities. This year saw an 11 per cent increase in foreigners as schools worked hard to compensate for a demographic decline in domestic students.
Martin Stephens, high master of St Paul's in London, predicted the 5 per cent of his students who applied to the US would rise to 10-20 per cent in the next decade. "Many of their parents are people who can contract their business anywhere in the world and are not necessarily committed to life in the UK - America is as natural a choice to them as anywhere else."
