Studying abroad has become a very important element in the educational curriculum of a very important part of the world’s student population. Companies take into account international experience, specially in a world where international relations keep gaining importance and having contact with people from different nationalities is almost impossible to avoid. However, while there has been quite exhaustive research on the benefits that study abroad programs bring to students that decide to enroll in international study programs, researchers have failed to reach a common conclusion on what are the main motivations that encourage students to undertake them. This study gathers elements from a set of theories and presents a statistical analysis of what are the main motivation that encourage private and public university students to study abroad. In order to so, the MSA theory’s motivational categories by Anderson and Lawton (2015) were used to formulate the study. This undergraduate dissertation depicts the motivational aspects that influence private and public university students and finds the common traits that these two groups have.