NYU Shanghai

NYU Shanghai is one of three degree-granting campuses of the NYU Global Network, including NYU Washington Square and NYU Abu Dhabi. It is also China’s first Sino-US research university. NYU Shanghai was founded in 2012 by New York University and East China Normal University with the support of the city of Shanghai and the district of Pudong.

NYU Shanghai seeks to cultivate globally-minded graduates through innovative teaching, world class research, and a commitment to public service. Its faculty of renowned scholars, innovators, and educators are recruited from the world’s best research universities.

At the graduate level, NYU Shanghai offers master’s, PhD, and non-degree programs in a wide range of academic and professional disciplines, all made possible through collaborations with other NYU schools and departments. The first of these programs was our MSW at Shanghai and New York, established in Fall 2015!

The Student Experience

NYU Shanghai’s student body consists of 1,400 undergraduate and graduate students, half of whom are from China and the rest of whom come from the United States and some 70 other countries. Our MSW Program at Shanghai and New York is similarly diverse. 

Michelle Wong, MSW ’19, who was in our third cohort, recalled “Unlike in New York, where we have completely different students in different classes, in Shanghai, we were in the same classes for almost every day. We could go deeper into our learning because of it. We were also quite diverse for a small group. It helped us to understand the diversity where we all came from, and really helped to provide a ‘rich raw material’ that we were taught in classrooms to appreciate the difference.”

Kaichen Tan, MSW ’20, shared, “I mingled well with several American students and started to reach out to the international students and engage them in social activities. For instance, I find many of us are gourmets, so I initiated a series of Culinary Adventures  – every Tuesday after class we will have dinner together. We’ve tried hotpot, Xinjiang, and Shanghai cuisines, just to name a few, and my classmates are so impressed.”

Justin Pataray, MSW ’20, said during his year in Shanghai, “I really like the urban lifestyle and everything is very convenient. Relating to my social work experience, I can appreciate what I have since in an urban-rural social structure, big cities enjoy more resources. Actually, I don’t feel much culture shock. I used to live in an ethnically Chinese part of Los Angeles and feel familiar with my living environment now. We don’t have a large graduate population in Shanghai but we have a strong identity... My classmates have organized trips across China and I have already traveled to Jiangsu and Gansu to visit the historical sites there to appreciate the Chinese culture.”