PRINCETON, N.J. — By now, Anne Kaenel and her classmates are used to the sidelong looks. Even in a university town where eccentric behavior is broadly tolerated, their ethnically diverse crew, joking and gossiping exclusively in Mandarin Chinese, attracts puzzled stares.

The self-consciousness fades quickly, Ms. Kaenel said. But there is still some disappointment that they are not in China, where, before SARS, they had planned to spend their summer in the Princeton-in-Beijing Chinese language immersion program.

"It's impossible to pretend you are in Beijing," Ms. Kaenel said in Mandarin, through an interpreter. Then, after a furtive look around to make sure no administrators were within earshot, she lapsed briefly into English. "You don't have the daily life exposure to the language, the Chinese soaps, the conversations on the street. We have some really qualified, great teachers here, but it's just not the same."

As far as the World Health Organization is concerned, the SARS epidemic is safely contained. Yet side effects are still being felt in places like Princeton, Beaufort, N.C., and the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where hundreds of American college students who had planned to attend China-based summer study programs ended up instead.

When the SARS crisis stretched into May, the directors of many of these programs were forced to cancel their plans. But others scrambled to make alternative arrangements on American soil.

That is why, on the Princeton University campus, there are 79 students who have spoken almost nothing but Mandarin Chinese for the last seven weeks. Everything is as it would be in China, at Beijing Normal University: students are asked to sign pledges to speak only in Mandarin to their teachers and to one another. Their days include four hours of grammar and vocabulary drills each morning, two and a half hours of one-on-one Chinese tutorials each afternoon, up to five hours of homework each night, and, occasionally, calligraphy workshops and early-morning tai chi. Students who break the language pledge face expulsion.

The program's co-director, Perry Link, a professor of East Asian studies at Princeton, conceded that adjustments had to be made. "We have had to make a little exception for those times when they absolutely have to order a hamburger from someone who doesn't speak Chinese."

The Duke Study in China Program, which also requires students to speak only Chinese, has made similar adjustments. The eight-week summer language program, normally held at Capital Normal University in northern Beijing, is being held at two of Duke's campuses, in Durham, N.C., and Beaufort, N.C.

Mavis Mayer, the program's coordinator, said more than 60 students had accepted places in the program, but only 22 attended once the SARS crisis forced her to relocate it.

"A lot of the students just said, `I'll try again next year,' " Ms. Mayer said. "But for the students that came out this summer, we've done our best to maintain the experience. The staff at the campus in Beaufort is very friendly and chatty, and we had to warn them: `These students aren't allowed to speak any English to you. It's not that they're being standoffish.' "

For administrators of study-abroad programs, the timing of the outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome — just as the American academic year was winding down — could not have been worse. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not lift its warnings against nonessential travel to Hong Kong and Beijing until June 25, far too late for the summer programs to go ahead.

The shift to the United States has made everything from dorms to hiring faculty members more costly.

"In Beijing, you can buy the time of Chinese graduate student tutors very cheaply," said Professor Link of Princeton. "We paid them well by Beijing standards, and it was very good for our students to have the one-on-one attention. This summer, we've kept the individual sessions, but we're losing money at the rate of about $1,000 per student."

Relocating the programs has also meant financial hardship for the Chinese partner universities, administrators said.

"I'm sure they've felt the pinch, too," Professor Link said. "Beijing Normal University normally gets about $100,000 per summer from us. They were reluctant to cancel it."

Professor Link said that, through the worst days of the SARS crisis, he had held out hope that the epidemic would abate in time for students to go to China. But Princeton administrators were concerned about the safety of students and potential liability issues.

The 26 students at the Tufts Institute for Leadership and International Perspective were to spend this summer in Hong Kong, interning at businesses and cultural institutions there and, later, traveling in mainland China. Instead, they are in New York City, living at the 92nd Street Y, and working at internships at city businesses and nonprofit groups, not all of them Asia-related. They do, however, get lectures on Asian history and politics and try to cook Asian food in their dorm kitchens.

Katie Reynolds, a Tufts senior from Paxton, Mass., said she was disappointed to lose her summer abroad, but had tried to make the best of the situation. "In terms of recreating the experience of Hong Kong, I don't think it's the same," she said. "But this is my first time in New York City, too. It's such a special city. Every day, we have the same conversation about whether New York is really an American city.

"We go into Chinatown a lot. We're definitely trying to tune in to the China in New York City," she added.

Administrators at all of the programs said they were doing what they could to give their students an authentically Chinese experience. Students in the Duke program have attended workshops on martial arts and Chinese herbal medicine. Besides visiting New York's Chinatowns, students in the Tufts program have also gone to the Chinese Scholar's Garden on Staten Island. Students in the Princeton program learned about the Chinese operatic tradition from a former member of the Beijing Opera, Yiqi Fan, who is one of their Chinese teachers.

Since the early 1990's, overseas study specialists say, American students have been flocking to Asia in rising numbers. Recent economic and social reforms have made China an increasingly popular destination.

Le-Ning Liu, the director of Columbia University's summer Chinese language program, said that 20 years ago the few students who enrolled in Chinese classes tended to do so because of a serious academic interest in Chinese culture. "Now China is opening up," Dr. Liu said. "Students realize that Chinese is practical. They're studying Chinese because they want to become businessmen and journalists."

Nancy E. Chapman, the executive director of the Yale-China Association, which runs several work, study, and cultural-exchange programs in China, said that over the last decade she had seen remarkable increases in interest in studying in China. (Yale-China's summer internship program was suspended this year; Columbia's program was moved to its campus.)

"Today's students were small children during the Tiananmen demonstrations," Ms. Chapman said. "College students don't remember what was happening three years ago, so there's no real memory of that time. China is much more accessible now. It's become a safe, viable study-abroad option for a variety of students, where it used to seem very distant and very exotic."

Administrators from all of the summer programs say that, barring a fresh epidemic, they intend to return to China next summer. And most universities have given the green light to fall programs in China.

"If SARS turns out to be a continuing problem, obviously that would have a negative effect," Ms. Chapman said. But she does not believe that most students will be so easily scared away.

Perhaps only Professor Link of Princeton will watch his students return to China with any tinge of regret. He has been banned from China for his criticisms of its government. His work includes translating and publishing "The Tiananmen Papers," classified Chinese government documents related to the suppression of the Tiananmen uprising.

"I'm still on a blacklist," he said. "This is the first time since 1994 that I've been able to be the administrator of the summer program, and to teach Princeton-in-Beijing students."