New York University

I am a recent transfer student into NYU (Beginning this fall) and I've had quite enough of the NYU complaints. New York University suffers from being one of the nations most envied university's. In other words, there are quite a bit of NYU rejects walking around who are know angry that NYU is quickly becoming known as one of the "New Ivies" ( As affirmed by the recent WALL STREET Journal Article which named NYU, Georgetown, Duke, Northwestern and Vassar as the

" New Ivy League" for its outstanding overal academic excellence. If NYU is so dam bad (according to some of the responses I have read) then why is that 30,000 applicants apply to the school each year for about 4,000 open spots. Do you mean to tell me that EVERYONE is only applying because of it's city location?? Ofcourse not. NYU is obviously one of the top 30 schools in the country. Spike Lee, JFK JR., Alec Baldwin, Amy Heckerling, Neil Diamond, and soooo many others are all NYU grads. I could go on forever, but I won't. I guess the question- or comment rather- that I would like to end on is: Even after graduating more famous alum then any other school in the country, offering more opportunities to its undergrads than any other school, and having more than 11 programs ranked in the TOP THREE in the US, according to US News & World Report....Why do we all love to hate on NYU???

1st Year Male -- Class 2003

Innovation: A+, Faculty Accessibility: B

Let me start off by saying that NYU is definitely not for everyone. I have friends who absolutely could not imagine themselves anywhere else, and other friends who aren't perfectly happy with NYU, to say the least.

Stern itself is a great school, and the administration requires that you take class in each of the 9 or so departments in the business school so that you're well grounded in all aspects of business, or the administration locks you down with a pretty large number of graduation requirements. It takes all of your freshman year and most of your sophomore year to finish all your graduation requirements, both Stern and MAP.

The business students have a repuation of being cutthroat competitors, and it tends to be truer as classes get smaller by junior year. MAP (Gen ed) courses tend to be pretty large,; most of my MAPs had about 100-150 people each. Stern gen ed classes tend to have about 30 people per. Professors in all of my classes so far have been helpful and have office hours for themselves and for their TAs, who are also helpful. Beware, however... do your research on professors or you may be stuck with some of the not-so-good professors.

NYU in general takes great efforts to protect students with a large NYU security force. Since 9/11 it's been required that every student present their NYU ID before entering a building. Some of the officers can be real dicks at times, however.

NYU without a doubt is out to get your money. The tuition rises every year, as does housing and meal plans. After my sophomore year I'm going to find some off-campus housing in New York... it's cheaper to rent a flat for an entire year compared to most of the dorms' school year rates. The dorm food is pretty disgusting, but good at some places like Faye's Cafe and Palladium. The meal plan is also a rip-off.

NYU has been spending lots of money in attempts to attract new students, like their new Kimmel building for student life due to be done by the end of 2002. The money would be much better spent in lots of different places, like improving the ethernet, for one thing. Dorm maintenance is generally good, if something's broken the maintenance people will fix it within the next two days.

Meeting people is hard to do outside of the first few weeks of school. For the most part people you hang out with will be people in your dorm and more specifically your floor. Weed is everywhere.The social life at NYU is what you make of it. It's very easy to stay in on weekends by yourself and not reveal yourself to the rest of your floor. There are always some sort of NYU parties all over the Village during the weekends, and one doesn't have to look hard to find them. Have fun.

1st Year Male -- Class 2005

Surrounding City: A+, Individual Value: F