The United Kingdom has eclipsed the United States as the most preferred overseas study destination for Chinese mainland students for the third year in a row, a new report showed.

According to the 2021 White Book on Chinese Students for Overseas Education, the UK was preferred by 29.8 percent of respondents, while the US was preferred by 24.5 percent.

The UK first topped the table in 2019, before last year's COVID-19 outbreak disrupted many students' overseas study plans, with 20.1 percent preferring the UK and 17 percent the US.

Australia was the third most popular destination this year with 16.5 percent, followed by Canada at 15.8 percent, Hong Kong at 13.7 percent and Japan at 8.8 percent.

The report, released by education consultancy EIC Education on Saturday, was based on a survey of 1,380 students.

It found that the COVID-19 pandemic remained a major factor in students' overseas study decisions. Around 60 percent of respondents said they would only feel safe studying abroad when travel restrictions were removed, would do so when their study destination had very few or no COVID-19 cases, when offline teaching had been restored and campuses reopened, and they had received COVID-19 vaccinations.

The report also found that more students intend to pursue master's degrees abroad, with 80.9 percent choosing to do so this year, up by 3.2 percentage points from 2019.Meanwhile, only 1.5 percent of students chose to study at primary and secondary schools abroad, down 2.3 percentage points from 2019.

Shi Yunhe, a senior undergraduate student at a university in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, said he wants to study at the University of Birmingham or the University of Sheffield for a master's degree in finance.

"I have thought about the US, but it seems the country is too chaotic for the time being and not very friendly to Chinese students," he said.

Shi said he is determined to attend offline courses and will consider delaying his studies if the pandemic is not under control.

Zhang Ying, the mother of a high school student in Shanghai, said the family has prepared 3 million yuan ($460,000) for her son to study in the UK-from preparatory courses to undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral studies in law, which her son was very interested in.

"I think he can attend a better university abroad than in China considering the fierce competition in the national college entrance exam," Zhang said.

"We do not care much about return on investment and we only want him to see the bigger world and learn something he really likes."

In 2019, 703,500 people from the Chinese mainland went abroad to study, up 6.25 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Education.