Alyanna Felix wept when she realized she was going to New York University. They weren’t tears of joy. The Philippines-born New Yorker had unwittingly also ticked the boxes for NYU’s Shanghai and Abu Dhabi campuses on her college application form. In the end, it was the Shanghai campus that accepted her. “I just burst into tears and said to my parents, ‘I’m going to go to China, aren’t I?’” Alyanna, 21, tells TIME in NYU Shanghai’s bustling cafeteria, as waves of dyed hair, piercings and pimples rush past.