Drawing on 12 months of fieldwork in Hyderabad, India, this paper describes the emergence of "international" schools that are only accessible to upper-middle class and elite families and provide forms of cultural capital increasingly important for middle-class employment--"communication skills", "open-mindedness" and "exposure". The role of these schools in the educational strategies of my informants reveals the limitations of education as a route to social mobility in the context of differential access to social, economic and cultural resources, as well as the ways in which local people engage with their position within a globalised economy as they make educational choices.