Maybe I can finally afford a banana.
April 19, 2025
“Why NYU Shanghai?”
Hi! My name is Ashley Chen, and I’m a junior majoring in Computer Science at NYU Shanghai because I forgot that I have to drop the Shanghai for marketing purposes. Please hire me still.
As of late, I finally installed the Reddit app after opening my Reddit notifications through my email and being constantly prompted to install the app. Finally equipped with the red alien icon in hand, my phone instantly goes off when the next NYU Shanghai student gets berated by a UHall security guard.
It never occurred to me that our very small student population actually used Reddit, though there are approximately three people who regularly respond, including myself.
There was one post that I felt within my area of expertise to answer: CS. Over the course of the next three days, the prospective student and I had multiple conversations about campus life, CS curriculum, and China.
Never do I reminisce about how I ended up committing to this school, nor do I ever care for the preposterous reasons that I used to convince my parents to let me fly across the world.
Now that I can’t change my decision or transfer to a different school now that I’m about to be a senior, I’m very grateful to my past self for choosing this school. “I love living in China,” I typically answer. “I love the convenience, boba, and the community we have on a small campus. The academic rigor is just right for me. And I wouldn’t have been able to get this in New York.”
Most importantly, Shanghai is the campus I called “home.” The word “home” wraps around my heart to comfort me whenever I feel lost. It’s the place I have good memories of, where I pulled my first all-nighter with my friends in the IMA Lab, where I cried in front of my professors and academic advisor about my grades, and where I killed my laptop battery running machine learning models overnight.
NYU Shanghai holds my blood, sweat, and tears hostage. I would never begin to dream of leaving.