West was raised in a middle-class environment, attending Polaris School for Individual Education in suburban
Oak Lawn, Illinois, after living in Chicago. At the age of 10, West moved with his mother to
Nanjing,
China, where she was teaching at
Nanjing University as a
Fulbright Scholar. According to his mother, West was the only foreigner in his class, but settled in well and quickly picked up the language, although he has since forgotten most of it. When asked about his grades in high school, West replied, "I got A's and B's."