Spend This Fall in Spain with NYU Madrid

I never really thought I would be going to Madrid, but after going and spending a year there, I fell in love. The city itself is beautiful, the metro and other public transportation is clean and easy to use, and traveling to other parts of Spain/Europe is just so much cheaper and convenient. The student life team at NYU Madrid was super friendly, and they really tried to make a lot of opportunities even though with COVID there were still some restrictions that made it hard. Being able to actually see the material we were learning about in class, and use the Spanish we were learning in daily interactions was really helpful and cool!

Program was really well organized and offered various opportunities to get exposed to the city and other parts of Spain. Amazing weather. Locals are extremely friendly and helpful.

Overall a good program. I recommend it. Just bring someone else along if you're not from NYU. Madrid is much better if you've got a friend in the city.

I loved Madrid, it was an amazing experience.

It was a great experience for me except for the homestay where I was cooked pasta every single dinner, hardly traditional. The planned trips were great.

My year in Madrid totally changed my life! I returned and got a Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American history from the University of Washington. I taught at St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges in Minnesota. In 1975, when Franco died, my Spanish family (which had been very active in the Spanish Civil War)sent me their life savings which I invested for them in the U.S. for 15 years until democracy was firmly established in Spain. I stayed in regular contact with "Madre" until her death in the 1990"s. What an experience! Thank you NYU.

I was at the Universidad de Carlos Tercera and loved it. School was a lot harder than I expected. I recommend it-- all classes in Spanish and I had a great host family.

Great time overall - great weather. A few issues: 1. food in homestay sucked 2. need more exposure with madrilenos. Warning: food in Madrid is horrible. other parts of Spain, much better.

It was very well organized & the institution had planned trips for us to go on which was an introduction to the culture in an academic standard.

I thought NYU did a good job creating community, which isolated its students from Madrileno culture. I felt it was harmful to my trying to integrate into the culture being on an NYU program.

Great place to study. Academics could have been more challenging but overall a great experience!

Experience was a blast. Recommended homestay for language exposure. NYU goes out of their way to expose students to the culture. NYU has its own classrooms in Spain which helps maintain program quality.

Knowledgable professors, the majority very committed to helping students. Extremely interesting subject matter for linguistics enthusiasts. Thesis provided an excellent opportunity to explore and research one's interests in depth. Madrid is quite good for linguistic and cultural immersion, as people will rarely, if ever, respond to non-natives in English. The disadvantages of the program I felt were rooted in the fact that some aspects of the infrastructure in Spain (lack of text and library resources, paucity of library hours, and generally slower pace of professional and academic life as compared with the U.S.—response time via e-mail, for example) were inadequate to support an accelerated, one-year, American-structured master's program. The program ought to be adjusted to befit the resources and pace of life in Madrid, and not simply exist as an American master's grafted onto a Spanish framework.

I have lived in other countries but for short periods of time, so I wanted to spend more than a few weeks abroad. I decided to study in Spain and I'm glad I did. I'm amazed at the level of immersion and impact culture had on my language skills. I was not terrible before, but I became close to fluency by the end of the program. I gained a holistic view of Spanish from its history to its use in verbal and nonverbal communication. Without this academic inclusion, I would not have had a pleasant time.

As a graduate student, I felt prepared going into classroom discussions from the cultural experience I received while in Spain. The atmosphere, the students, and the professors brought to life the literary features that we'd studied. Although, the management of the program was poor, I truly resonated with the lovers of literature and culture. I loved the trips to Seville and Bilbao because I was allowed to see the environment from a unique perspective. Furthermore, I loved working with my faculty advisor, who gave me quality and positive feedback on my thesis. Not all of the professors were that way, but some were encouraging and willing to help. As a program, I would say that the best experiences were the trips, formation of my thesis, and cultural immersion.

As a student, I was impressed with the amount of cultural excursions and the opportunities to become a true citizen of Spain. I loved the practical nature of the program, which is why I would recommend this program to anyone looking to take their Spanish to the next level.

As a graduate student, I was quite impressed with the level of rigor in this particular program. Professors were knowledgeable, easily accessible, and clearly academic experts in their specific fields. The cohorts are small, which allows for more individualized access to professors and colleagues and has potential to create space for collaborative learning environments. The highlight of the program most definitely lies in the academics / coursework- all conducted in the Spanish language. For me, this was a big plus and a main selling point of the NYU Madrid program.

The NYU Spanish M.A. Madrid provides a good opportunity for students of the Spanish language to be immersed in the scholarly world and culture surrounding the language. The top notch professors at NYU Madrid are always willing to provide help and guidance to students. In addition, the city itself boasts an excellent cultural offering, with world class museums and a lively social and night life.

While I had a great overall experience in Spain, I would attribute very little of that to NYU itself. The school administration provided little to no support for our visa applications, housing search or financial aid, and I generally found the staff to be distant and uninterested in advising on those and other issues, including an interpersonal conflict between several classmates lasting the entire year, which influenced group cohesion and the general academic environment. The main campus in New York was of little help either, and it seems that the two campuses don't communicate all that well with each other. For example, many of the students in my class were offered $3000 in work study, but it turns out that work study is unavailable on the Madrid campus for more than one or two students, and even the ones who were able to participate only made a few hundred dollars over the course of the year. The academic standards are also very low--it is permissible to submit one's thesis in English, for example, and many students made it through the year without speaking regularly in Spanish. That being said, the professors themselves are truly amazing, so the academic experience is great in that way, but I would recommend saving your money and applying directly to the local universities where they regularly teach.

NYU Madrid was one of the best decisions I've made. Apart from the academics, I gained an in-depth insight to life as a Spaniard, and really as a Spanish speaker. Living in a unique culture, help me to improve my language proficiency and much more. I wish I could relive my experiences because it was that great!