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

I attended NYU for undergrad and for my MBA. Professors tend to be approachable and friendly though it is a mixed bag b/c of so many adjuncts and lecturers who aren't getting the $ to take a keen interest in you unless they are really into their subject. On the grad level however I think you probably won't find a better group of professors in the country.

The cultural programs at NYU tend to be a little bland and administration-controlled. Hazing at frats and sororities does happen, and that's probably not a good thing. I had the fortune of being able to enter an old "underground" student organization that avoids dealing with the university, outside of specific professors and administrators, as much as possible less the PC/EO police determine that we were breaking rules. There aren't many serious outlets for out of class intellectual pursuits, i.e. debate, lit societies, etc. outside maybe the couple of underground societies.

In general, there is a lot of interaction from people from varying backgrounds with a little effort. Some of the Asian students tended to separate themselves (I assume those that did were from abroad) but besides that there is a lot of cooperation and student interaction in and out of the classroom. There is also a bit of competition among MBA students.

From what I've noticed working with corporate employers and in academia, most tend to see NYU grads as intelligent and the school has a really good rep. The popular image of the school is strong in academics, if lacking in the "clubby" or "collegiate" atmosphere.

I've found that, having attended Cornell (MPA) and NYU that it is NYU that provides me with the strongest alumni network and the best NY metro area alumni networking. (Whether that is b/c NYU's size and location I don't know.) Word to the wise: Lack of an engineering school hurts NYU b/c the option isn't there for students and engineering helps research and rankings. That's not going to change anytime soon. Whatever you do avoid the program with Stevens Institute- they try to poach students from NYU who apply for the joint program and Stevens has to be the most Gawd awful social environment ever. I was considering NYU engineering only to turned off b/c of the Stevens people and the ADVISOR who told me about NYU's plans to reconstitute their engineering program. Still pissed about that to this day!

Alumnus Male -- Class 2000