[the_tyrant]

A huge reason is this American fascination towards liberal arts.

In many Asian countries, there is a stigma that "liberal arts are for losers". In most Chinese schools, we can see a trend that smart kids go into science and engineering, the not so smart ones go into finance and commerce, and the absolute bottom of the pack go into the arts.

Thus at the high school level, anybody who isn't too dumb would go and study the maths and sciences, wereas with american students, too many of them would not study math and science, since they are aiming to study liberal arts in university.