I am from Colombia, in South America. I have been in New York for about 7 months. I decided to come to New York because I think this is a cosmopolitan city, which involves many cultures. Here you can meet people from many different countries and learn a lot about the cultures. For example, I have meet people from Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Norway, Switzerland, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Turkey.

In the beginning, when I arrived in New York, I went to New York University (NYU) and I studied one semester there. This semester I started at Global English Academy, which offers the same quality professors as NYU, but for a much more affordable price. After starting at Global English Academy, I was surprised to learn that one of my professors here also teaches at NYU. I have been very happy that I decided to switch schools.

Global English Academy is a small academy that lets you focus on studying English. They have four classrooms and the number of students per class is good, which means that they pay a lot of attention to the students and you receive more attention from the professors. The infrastructure is very good; they have classrooms with TVs, DVDs and others with Smart boards, depending on the necessity.

In a normal schedule, you have two classes with two different professors. I am taking the full schedule, but I know they have very flexible schedules, which adjust to the individual necessities of the students. This is a very important point. In addition, you can find a TOEFL preparation class here.

In synthesis, you can feel confidence coming here because the professors here have a lot of experience teaching and they have master's degrees in teaching English from renowned schools such as Columbia University, New York University and Boston University. The directors have many years of experience in this field. They are not improvising, and some of them have previous experience as directors at Hunter College. Global English Academy is a very well organized and well run academy.

Being an international student in New York City, I never feel like a foreigner here at all. This is a very multicultural city. In the beginning, it takes time to adapt to the language, but once you tune your ear, you start to enjoy learning English and talking everywhere.

Paolo Rosso New York March 8, 2011