New York University

NYU as a school emmersed in NYC is amazing! New York is incredible and within a few months at the school you get to learn so much about such a cool and important place! However, while the course selection at NYU is large and impressive, the faculty tends not to be. I have mostly graduate students and TA's teaching me rather than full faculty members. Classes tend to be HUGE unless you take a very specific course or a language. The bureacracy at the school is terrible and you definitely do not get the feeling the school is on your side... it very much feels like a money making machine. From the outside, NYU looked awesome but from within, its very impersonal.

1st Year Female -- Class 2007

University Resource Use/ spending: A+, Faculty Accessibility: F

Its funny to hear all these little kids complain about NYU, I graduated in 2000 from CAS, came in as a transfer student, and it was the single best thing that ever happened to me. I agree that its not the easiest place to meet people, but please, you had to realize this was not your average run of the mill college before you came. In fact, most of the friends I made at NYU were international students. I remember going out for dinner for a friend's birthday (even transfers can make friends if they try... maybe all the people who complain are just boring)... and out of 20 odd NYU students at the dinner, I was the only American at the table. Tell me what school can give you that kind of exposure. One of the people who posted actually knocked my major, politics, which I don't fully understand. Yeah, you only need 8 classes, but the classes I took were absolutely incredible. Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America, The Middle East, Africa, and Asia... it covered everything. Politics (Political Science, i still don't quite understand what the difference, if any, is...) was the best major I could have chosen... its a brilliant hybrid of history, government, economics, and sociology. Granted its not Finance, but frankly the courses I despised the most were Macro and Micro economics... which everyone has to take.Anyhow, I was hired 2 months before i graduated and was employed for the most part until i started law school this past year. My current classmates for the most part are from Columbia, Cornell, U Penn, Brown, Georgetown, Michigan... and all the little liberal arts schools that ship you off into the boonies of some New England State for four years of isolation and boredom. NYU gets respect from everyone i've encountered... that was exactly what I wanted, and its exactly what I got. Not to mention a massive injection of reality being dropped into the middle of the most intense city in the world.

4th Year Male -- Class 2000

Surrounding City: A+, Extracurricular Activities: B-

I tried not to be too harsh in my grading, but I must say that NYU has been a big dissapointment. Really the only overarching positive about NYU is the name. When I tell people I am a double major at NYU it seems pretty impressive, it's no Harvard, but it does have a very well respected name around in most of the Northeast. Saying you go to NYU puts you in good circles and gets you at least some respect. With that said, NYU HAS BEEN A BIG DISSAPOINTMENT. I have never seen such callous disregard for students in my life. The student body is very intelligent (for the most part) yet most of the teachers and TA's treat us like nobodies. This is especially a problem for TA's in the less competitive department's like Politics, who came from some crappy undergrad school and are now grad students and TA's at a university where most of the undergrad's are far far smarter than they are. They seem to take out their frustrations on you both by not caring and by grading poorly. But for the most part the grading is very very fair. Some departments are more rigorous than others (Math, Econ, Stern, Computer Science), while some are a complete joke (Politics, History, English, Gallatin). Some majors require up to 14 courses, while others only require 8!! You can make NYU as difficult or as easy as you want. There tends to be a lot of grade inflation. For example, in one class 80% of the students get a B or higher. Since about 10% of any given class doesn't even show up for half the exams, you are virtually guaranteed a B if you just show up and take the tests. In some departments, like Econ or Finance, there will be a lot of smart students and even with grade inflated curves it might be very difficult to obtain a high grade. I tend to think that NYU likes to center its grades very well, making it unlikely you'll get a C but also unlikely you'll get an A. The bell curve distribution tends towards B's or B+'s. I think the biggest benefit of getting into and going to NYU is that they know you are a competitive student by virtue of getting in and they know you likely want to go to grad school so they are going to grade you accordingly. There are lots of honors programs and ways to beef up your resume/diploma/application for grad school. If you are serious about going to grad school straight out of undergrad, NYU definitely won't hurt your chances.

2nd Year Male -- Class 2004

Innovation: A+, Faculty Accessibility: F