I'm interested in NYU Stern, but I keep hearing how NYU is great for recruiting but is awful overall because of how cutthroat everyone is. I want to go to a school with a solid entry to ibanking and hedge funds in NYC, but I want to also network and socialize. Any experience with alumni or current students to settle my fears? Thanks
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There are definitely kids who are not as cutthroat that land IB gigs. You don't need to be a dick to survive in Stern.
It's generally considered one of the best business schools in the country.
its not a good college experience
I would def not go to nyu for undergrad
grad school is fine but due to its location and lack of a real campus feel you don't treally have as many experiences
In regards to the "networking and socializing" part, yes, you will have plenty of opportunities to do that at NYU. However, NYU has one of the worst college experiences on offer. If you don't care much about college sports, the college atmosphere, laid back girls, etc. than NYU will be fine for you. Otherwise, it may be time for you to consider transferring to another target school.
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I'm sure I'm biased, but being a college student in Manhattan with very few real responsibilities doesn't make for a bad college experience. Definitely not traditional, but if you can't have fun and meet women in NYC, then the problem is probably not with the school you attend 15 hours a week.
Did you go to Stern?
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Care to expand?
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Undergrad business programs in general are competitive, but Wharton and Stern easily take the cake. I know very few who went to either program say great things about their undergrad experience. Classes are curved, students are all competing for the same finance jobs, recruiting is crazy.
If NYU Stern is your best option, go and kick ass your freshman year, and if you don't like it, try to transfer to harvard/yale/wharton/stanford/columbia/dartmouth/duke. All those schools will give you same if not better finance options and are better college experiences.
Lots of unique opportunities at Stern that you don't get at other schools. Great school - haven't experienced a cutthroat atmosphere here but its is a very pre-professional environment and people are serious about getting internships / jobs but at the same time everyone wants to have fun too. Everyone is also extremely qualified and intelligent so be prepared to bring your A-game.
No, you don't have to do school year internships to be competitive for spots - i just went through recruiting and a lot of people with high GPAs and little to no experience got interviews at top places (GS, MS, CS etc.). You just have to demonstrate interest in finance somehow - through clubs, case competitions, etc.
No you can't just go to Duke and party all the time and get the same IB jobs either. Besides the larger banks that recruit everywhere the number of shops that recruit at NYU / Stern is much greater than the number shops that recruit at Duke. I mean it's really incredible just how many firms recruit at NYU and IB is an industry where once you break into it, its relatively painless to lateral to another place if you want.
Some people demonstrate interest through school year internships just because you are in the city and they are readily available if you seek it out although not at all necessary.
Number of shops and quality of shops are two different things.
Yes but I've seen so many Stern alums who went to no-name boutiques and mm firms maybe becuase of low GPA or something else lateral to top BBs and EBs after a couple of months on the job.
A lot of these boutiques most likely don't even recruit at schools outside of NYC because they don't have the resources to do so and train non-business / finance students. And there are a ton of these kinds of places.
How are/were the girls?
This is such bullshit.
What are you talking about - how is it BS?
If you are talking about not having to do school year internships - it's not BS at all. If you have something freshman and sophomore summer with a high GPA you will easily get a lot of interviews. You don't need to intern during the school year at all - though a lot of people choose to do it for whatever reason (money, to explore different areas, etc, or if they are really paranoid about recruiting and want to get a better frosh / soph summer internship). Experienced this first-hand and saw so many kids with lack of experience but relatively high GPAs pull down interviews. I even saw some pretty dumb people with low GPAs that barely knew what IB was pull down interviews / offers at respectable MM shops.
If you are talking about the number of shops recruiting at Duke and NYU, that's not BS either. All the big guys (the GSs and MSs of the world) will recruit at both schools. The advantage that NYU gets is with the EBs and MM firms that recruit mainly at undergrad B-Schools (HLHZ, Rothschild, Evercore etc.). Then there are small M&A boutiques that don't have the resources go out and recruit at so many schools - there are SO MANY of these small guys that'll take analysts (probably around 2-4 each) that NYU students are familiar with that Duke students are not (Rabobank, BCMS corporate, Brocair, Stephens, Sawaya to name few). The people at NYU that get these positions are usually the kids that didn't really get an offer at a BB or an EB and tend to have low GPAs but relevant experience.
If you are talking about lateralling from one of those small shops to a bigger guy - it's not that hard since all of your friends are at the big shops and know when analysts are quitting / leaving and will put you in the process for a lateral hire. At that point they just need to fill the spot ASAP and are looking for IB experience. Just look at Linkedin and you'll see guys from these smaller places jump to bigger firms all the time. Lateral hiring is much easier than FT hiring if you have the experience and can do the work.
What part is BS exactly?
I almost went there but I backed out of my ED at the last minute. I visited the campus many times. Well, if you can call it a campus. Stern puts up this facade of how prestigious it is when it is screwing its kids into a 250k debt. That's almost half a mil after interest. At that point, the education isn't even an investment, it's a gamble. I personally have three friends who all regret going to Stern. Not only is it academically stressful, but there is no college experience to be had i.e. sports teams, solid greek life, etc. They told me that once they got over the experience of living in NYC, which didn't take long, they realized the shit hole of student debt that they will have for the rest of their life. Students realize this, so that is why they study extremely hard to break into the limited high finance positions available. The Stern curves only awards ~20% of the class A's which puts even more pressure on them. Its a vicious cycle.
Where did you go instead? Also NYU Stern has over 400 alumni at GS right now. I find it hard to believe that it's hard to find high paying finance jobs coming out of Stern.
I ended up going to my state school which was much cheaper. However, this was due to the fact that my state school is one of the top public universities in the country. I live in the south.. this should be a giveaway. I guess it really depends on what state you live in and where you want to work in the future. If you live in a state without a good public university and you are 100% sure you want to work in NYC then Stern is a decent choice if you didn't get into Columbia or other top Ivies. It also depends on how much aid you get or how much money your parents can pay. If you are relying on yourself for college and have to take out loans... I would reconsider.
You're 4 year bar tab will be much lower elsewhere. Quarter beers aren't a thing at NYU.
Should be your biggest determining factor. I can't imagine how much I would have added to the cost of school from having to go NYC bars all the time.
I remember I used to go out in college with $20 in my wallet and that would almost always be enough for 7-8 mixed drinks and a round of shots or two. Couldn't imagine paying $8 a beer in NYC as a broke student.
In my opinion, I would rather go to a college with a real campus, in a college town, with a football team that plays in games that College Gameday covers, where beers are $2, that actually has greek life, with tons of hot girls, with great weather year round. But thats just me.
Sure, NYC is great. I think that almost anybody would agree its in the top 3 places for a young professional to live in. But the city will always be there, and living there after graduation is a much better situation than being a college student in New York.
I went to Stern undergrad and was able to get a 3.5 without much effort. Most classes during your four years are not on the Stern curve (as least as of a couple years ago) - plenty of core and elective classes in other schools in addition to easy Stern courses. In terms of the "cut throat" culture, NYU and Stern are big places and you'll find all types of people. There are certainly some hyper career focused weirdos/loners who would happily stab you in the back, but they were a small minority in my experience and easily avoided. I had plenty of friends with 4.0 GPAs who were perfectly normal human beings. This was my experience and hope it helps you.
Everything except for elective classes with less than 20 or so people is on the curve now. Must have been a piece of cake a few years ago
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