Studying abroad is an adventure to remember, and the thing all students have to grapple with is adjusting to a new home, whether that comes with a new language, routine, or breakfast. And at a university like NYU where students are not only encouraged to study abroad, but some are required to do so, the struggle of culture-shock is one almost all of its students can relate to.

When Belinda Weng, a junior on the New York campus, decided to study abroad, she only knew she wanted to travel to China, where her family came from. Shanghai was the only choice, and as a native New Yorker she wasn’t expecting it to be too different, going from one mega city to another. This was not the case, as she found upon her arrival, because New York City and Shanghai have surprisingly different atmospheres.

“Whenever I’m in New York, you have your own, like, rules you gotta follow. Make sure you don’t put your phone in your back pocket, make sure you zip your bag, etc,” Weng said of her experiences being out in the city, especially at night. “But here, no one really steals. Pickpocketing is nonexistent here.” Shanghai may be three times the size of New York, but safety is a non-issue for most people. Lauren Donnelly, another student studying abroad from New York City, agreed. In Manhattan, safety is a top priority.

“If I ever stop for a moment, or walk slightly the wrong way, there’s always, like, some man saying something to me. It’s always very uncomfortable,” she said about being out and about in New York City. When she spoke about how she felt in Shanghai, the difference was stark. “I haven’t really had any problems with people approaching me here. I went on a run at night and I was like, there’s no one even here. It’s really empty.”

Donnelly knew she would be going to Shanghai before she got to New York, as studying abroad is a requirement for her international relations major. “I had basically planned it out before I even came to NYU.”

But despite the pleasant surprise of a safe city that most New York students studying in Shanghai experience, it’s odd that they had never been told in the first place. In fact, for all NYU encourages its students to study abroad, it has very little to say about one of its flagship campuses. Both Weng and Donnelly decided to go of their own accord, and NYU had to do little else besides process the application.

“I sought it out. I followed the Instagram. I went on YouTube,” Weng said about her campus research. “I didn’t really ask that many people. I mean, there’s not that many people to ask.”

The information students can gather about NYU Shanghai is from social media, or the NYUSH websites, which, from the perspective of a New York student, makes it seem like the two campuses are the same, both distinctly NYU. “I knew there was a campus, but honestly, I kind of came into this very blindly,” Weng said. The culture shock wasn’t just with the new city; it was with the new campus, too. “I thought it was just going to be like New York with more of a campus. I didn’t expect it to be this small.”

But while NYU New York has few words to say about Shanghai, NYU Shanghai has a lot to say about New York. Arturo Ayala, an NYUSH junior intending to study abroad in New York next semester, said it’s often a topic on people’s lips. “I think both faculty and students on the whole encourage underclassmen to think about New York as an option,” he said.

And it makes sense why; NYU Shanghai, unlike its American counterpart, requires all of its students to study abroad for at least two semesters of their four years as college students. Why wouldn’t they push the original NYU campus as a place everyone should want to go?

“When I first came here, me and a lot of other students viewed New York as the end-all-be-all, the dream campus,” said Ayala. There are a lot of benefits to spending some time at a unique campus like New York’s, too. “It’s such a big campus and has so many more classes than Shanghai could offer,” he said on why he wanted to study abroad in NYC.

But over the last few years, New York has started to lose some of its shimmer and shine. “You spend more time around people who have been there, and you start thinking about everything, and realize Shanghai is much, maybe not better, but more suitable for your day-to-day life kind of campus.”

Ayala is a junior at NYUSH, and said over time, he started seeing Shanghai as the better campus. “You know, it’s much safer, it’s much cleaner. Even though the classes aren’t as varied, it’s a much smaller area, but you can develop closer connections with students and professors.”

Some of this is not only due to people seeing New York as more of a concrete jungle, but also less of a ‘what dreams are made of.’ Outside of the city, as big as it is, the world’s opinion on the United States is changing.

“Whenever I try to access the news on America, what I see are gunshots, gunshots, gunshots,” said Andy Li, a Chinese National who’s never been to America (unless you count the two weeks he spent in California 10 years ago, which he does). “I try not to believe what the media tells me, but I still get a kind of shadowy feeling, if I’m being totally honest. It makes me think twice about going to America.”

And Li is not alone. Since 2023, the number of international students coming to the US to study has dropped by 19%, according to a study by the International Trade Administration. And in the wake of the Trump administration's sweeping sanctions on providing international students with study visas, this percentage is sure to grow.

“Me and my family are very open to the idea of studying abroad. But of course, what they always tell me is to stay safe,” Li explained. “I’ve considered going to America as a college student before, 100%. I think what happened was that, somehow, attitudes changed.”

Those attitudes changing can be attributed to both political and public safety reasons. A survey done by the Citizens’ Budget Commission found that 78% of New Yorkers don’t think the subway is safe at night, a massive 24% jump since 2017. When neither the country nor the city you’d like to travel to feel safe, why would you travel there?

Because of all of this, many students in Shanghai are second-guessing the seemingly obvious choice to study abroad at the original NYU campus. Its presence and impact can’t be overlooked, however, safety issues or not.

“NYU’s home campus is still viewed as a goal and as something to look at as the ‘it’ campus,” Ayala said. “But I think a lot of students, especially in Shanghai, and I imagine also in Abu Dhabi, have come to realize the advantages of being in their respective campuses.”