While most students flocked to the Washington Square campus to start the 2016-2017 year, some 1,500 undergraduate students opted to book a different flight by beginning the school year at study away locations.

In addition to NYU’s three degree-granting campuses at New York, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, NYU also boasts 11 study away sites: Accra, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Florence, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Sydney, Tel Aviv and Washington D.C.

According to statistics from the Global Program Office, London is the largest site and can accommodate 450 students; the second and third largest are Florence and Paris, which hold 350 and 260 students, respectively.

Christopher Nicolussi, senior director of student services in NYU Global Program Office, said that students normally choose sites based on classes for their programs, since studying abroad should not impede a student’s academic career. The decision ultimately comes down to a compromise between location preference and academic interests, Nicolussi said.

“You can go to a big restaurant that is really crowded, but nobody is waiting at the door,” Nicolussi said to draw a comparison of applicant pool size and student capacity. “And there is a small restaurant down the street with people lining up — you can’t decide which one is more popular.”

Tel Aviv and Accra, which both only hold 15 to 25 students every semester, receive many more applicants, especially from Public Health majors interested in research.  Other popular locations offer internship opportunities so students can gain work experience, something students value highly in NYC, while studying abroad.

GLS senior Marsha Ho spent her entire junior year in Buenos Aires and interned with an association of photojournalists over the course of her studies.

“I picked Buenos Aires because I am from Singapore, and I have never been to South America at all,” Ho said. “I did a lot of work with archiving rolls of films and I was in gloves. It was really cool because it was the history of Argentina and I was given the privilege of touching it.”

Should you find yourself in a quandary in choosing your own study abroad experience, look under the Global Study Planner tab under NYU Academics for more information.

Sept. 15 is the study away priority deadline for Spring 2017, and the regular deadline is Oct. 15.

Email Yifan Li at [email protected].