When NYU students think about spending a semester overseas, they usually don’t think of New York as their destination. For students from NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai, however, New York is a popular destination for those spending a semester studying away from their home campuses.
This fall marks the first semester in which students from both NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai are in New York (NYUAD students have been studying in New York since 2011-12), with some 200 students studying on the Square and in Brooklyn for the semester.
Academics is the driving reason students chose to come study in New York. Students from NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai are able to advance their course of study and work towards their majors with NY’s world-class faculty. They are excited to take advantage of courses and programs offered in New York. The pre-professional programs at Stern and Tisch are especially compelling for finance and econ or theatre and film majors.
Students studying abroad in New York have a unique opportunity to study and live with students from other campuses while also discovering all that NYC has to offer. Students participate together in programming which allows them to participate in events at NYU and in events designed to give them a sense of NYC. Students can watch a documentary film about something – Central Park or the Gray Line cruise, for example – and pair that with an off-campus outing to see what they have just learned about in order to illuminate their experience.
Students also have opportunities to engage with the NYU community on the Square. Faculty Fellows in residence have opened spots for other students outside their residences to participate in their activities, so that these visiting students have opportunities to do so. NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai have elected student representatives on the Class Activities Board so that they can have input and also inform their classmates about activities. In these and other ways, the visiting students are able to have a rich experience on campus.
As NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai continue to grow, we’ll be seeing more of these students in New York and at the other global sites. For now, it’s great that we have students from all three of NYU’s degree-granting campus in NYC for a semester for the first time.