You've gotten some excellent advice from those who have already replied. I'll share some additional thoughts.

AA may not be your only choice, but in my opinion, it's your best choice. Not only will you have access to direct flights to China on American, but might be able to snag award travel on OneWorld partner Japan Airlines. Before AA had direct flights from Chicago to Beijing, we got business seats on JAL via Tokyo (a small inconvenience), returning from Shanghai on AA's direct flight to Chicago.

I also agree with the earlier suggestions of finding other ways to rack up miles, like AA dining rewards and doing your online purchases through AA eShopping. If you want some additional advice, please feel free to consult my free tipsheet published at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17745143/F...Flier-Tipsheet

I'm not sure how practical it will be to hope for tickets even in the second year, since the best time to book award travel is 330 days in advance of the desired flight date, and you will not likely have enough miles to do that in the first year.

For what it's worth, I think your proposed plan to use SPG Amex whenever you can and AAdvantage MasterCard otherwise is excellent. My recommendation, however, would be to retain your SPG points in your SPG account and not transfer them to AA as you go. That way, if this plan doesn't work and you relocate and find some other airline better suited to your needs, you can transfer your SPG points at that time to the other airline's program.

This may be a long shot, but if your parents can get a Starwood AMEX in China, SPG allows the transfer of points between family members at the same address. If they can get the card, you can turbo-charge your points by having them do all their purchases on their Starwood AMEX (they will also get the sign-up promotion, so they should each have their own account and not share a joint one) and then transfer their points to you if you still use their address as yours.

Did you check to see if you graduate school accepts credit cards? If so, you may be able to request a one-time increase in your credit limit to take advantage of that. Just be sure they're not charging a service fee. If they do, it's not worth it.

Good for you for starting this at an early age. I see lifetime Gold status in your future! Good luck.