Current Stern Sophomore: Ask Me

Colleges and Universities A-Z New York University
21

<p>@esthetique
One of my really good friends (the one I mentioned earlier who I lived with over the summer who works uptown at a hedge fund) is doing exactly that. He applied to and attends Stern (come to think of it I can’t recall his major) and is also majoring in Applied Mathematics at Courant through CAS. In his words, “it’s a *****” because he has to take so many more classes to meet his credit requirement for the major there. It’s forcing him to either take an additional semester or max out his credit load for every single semester he has left.</p>

<p>The thing is, in Stern, each major is only an additional 12 credits because our core curriculum is so comprehensive. That means that for me with a double-major in Stern, I have to take the same 5 or 6 semesters worth of core classes for each major, and only one of my eight semesters will go to each major. Out of 8 semesters, only 2 are for my actual declared degrees. In CAS, however, a major is a significantly higher credit commitment (something like 32, I believe), which makes it challenging when you have such a high commitment for your Stern core already. If that wasn’t difficult enough, he chose one of the hardest CAS majors there is. Kid’s a glutton for punishment, if you ask me. <em>__</em></p>

<p>@240000
Food here is actually surprisingly above-average. It being NYU, everything is, as always, unnecessarily lavish. There are 8(?) places to eat on campus, so if one place or another doesn’t suit your taste, you still have several options. Some are cafeteria all-you-can-eat, others are based on a “meal equivalency” plan (1 fountain drink, 1 entree item, 1 side), others are convenience stores where you use either your Campus Cash or dining dollars to buy groceries you can use in your room.</p>

<p>Living in New York also gives you unparalleled access to a wealth of dining options off-campus too. As a freshman you’re required to maintain one of the more sizable meal plans, and for good reason. It’s so convenient to be able to eat close to where you live without having to fumble for cash or wonder if your debit card has enough for you to eat out. Chinatown is a bit far from ‘campus,’ you wouldn’t want to go there frequently simply for the distance. It’s blocks away from where I live now (Soho ;-]), but I’m not a huge fan of it personally. There are so many cheap places on University Place and 8th Street that are ideal for college kids though. Food is never a problem.</p>

22

<p>Thanks for answering my questions man :)</p>

23

<p>Thanks so much! It really, really helped hearing experiences from a current, knowledgeable Stern student. :)</p>

24

<p>Question:</p>

<ol>
<li>DSP vs. AKPsi?</li>
<li>are you planning to intern during the school year?</li>
<li>How tough is BIP in terms of grading? Did the Stern curve generally work against you or with you?</li>
</ol>

25

<p>You’re all welcome, I’m glad to help. I knew absolutely nothing about this school before I applied other than it was ranked 4th nationally, and once I got here I quickly realized how much bureaucracy stifles everything here. I’m sure that applies to the application process as well, so I hope this helps any/all of you who need to know a bit more than you’ve been able to discover so far.</p>

<p>@shuffle

  1. Haha. Sorry for that, but that’s always been my reaction. Those societies, in addition to BAP, are not what I’m looking for. Don’t get me wrong at all, they offer quite often unparalleled opportunities in networking, professional development, leadership training, academic assistance while you’re in school, and much more. However, at least here, they are virtually homogenous, soul-claiming entities that do the opposite of what I think an intelligent person would want.</p>

<p>BAP in particular is focused on “branding” you in the BAP mold; making you look, dress, act, talk, and above all (<em>shudder</em>) think the same way as dozens of your peers while you’re here and hundreds who have come before and will after you as well. These societies homogenize you; they’re overwhelmingly Asian, more so than Stern itself is (69% as of most recent statistic I believe), they all do the same things, they all think the same way.</p>

<p>To me, success is completely about differentiation. Diversity is critical to moving forward, both as an entire global society and as an individual in the financial services industry. Diversity is a word that carries far too much stigma. People need to realize it means more than “underrepresented minority” – it means breadth and depth in ideology, thought, experience, age, personal history . . . so much more than you can quantify simply by looking at the sole factor of race. I have many friends in all three business frats. I watched and am watching them pledge, getting buried by all the pledging activities in the middle of a 16-18 credit Stern semester, struggling to do a million things well instead of a few things brilliantly. </p>

<p>That isn’t what I want for myself, nor what I’d recommend for any person I consider a friend. In the end, will it provide you with a quantifiable set of skills and an undeniably strong network, important experiences, and potential for success in your career? Yes. Yet is that something any out-of-the-mold, independent, driven student wouldn’t be able to do? No, not in the least. </p>

<p>What I imagine is that at a lot of top-100 or even top-50 undergrad programs each of those professional fraternities offer something tangibly unique and different. Here, however, there is so much you can do to advance yourself simply through self-initiative and commitment that (at least to me personally) joining such a group isn’t worth it.</p>

<ol>
<li>Yes. I didn’t have the greatest GPA coming out of freshman year so that limited me quite a bit, but I’m heavily involved with on-campus recruitment right at this moment. Literally. I’ve had six interviews and attended four seminars since last Monday, and I have more to come. I have one with BarCap in less than an hour, a JPMorgan seminar tomorrow evening, and three interviews on Friday. Wish me luck? =)</li>
</ol>

<p>All of these are for Summer 2011. I’d be applying for their spring programs as well, but I’m spending the semester in Florence and judging from everything every advisor and mentor I have has told me, as well as undeniable evidence from recruiters, studyabroad is a MAJOR plus so I’m content with that. Besides, I <em>really</em> want the opportunity to spend time in Europe so I’d choose it anyway. Hopefully though, I’ll get a good offer for the summer and be able to perform well enough to get an offer for in-year and the following summer.</p>

<ol>
<li>BIP is hard for a lot of people, particular (and take this at face value) the Asian kids. Many of them don’t enjoy the privilege of having English as a native language, and many more never enjoyed it as a strength during primary/secondary school. Some kids in general just aren’t great at qualitative topics to begin with. I personally had the benefit of having the dearest professors ever. My Inquiry prof was a very sweet, wise man who we learned a lot from. My Discourse teacher was a fairly serious grader but, as I’m guessing you may begin to tell from the way I’ve conducted myself through this entire thread, I’ve never really struggled with expressing myself verbally or through writing.</li>
</ol>

<p>The curve is definitely a challenge in such a small class. If (at max) 25% of students can receive an A/A-, with 19 students you’re looking at literally 4 kids coming away with a decent grade. I got one of the top three grades in the class on each of the three cycle papers, so it worked out well for me, but I know some of my friends fared worse than that.</p>

<p>Most of your questions lead me to believe you’re really familiar with Stern. Are you a freshman?</p>

26

<p>Hey, I am a CAS freshman interested in double majoring in Stern/CAS (journalism & finance) but I have to transfer to Stern to do that. It said on the Stern application website that transfer students applying as a sophomore must have taken Microeconomics. Does Economic Principles II count? What is the difference between that and the course called “Microeconomics?” </p>

<p>Oh and also, should I take Statistics or Calculus II? (I’m in Calculus I this semester). How many levels of Calculus are Stern students expected to complete? </p>

<p>Do you have any other advice on what I should do next semester to increase my chances of getting a transfer? </p>

<p>Registering for spring classes… fun! LOL. Thanks for the help!</p>

27

<p>I can’t give you a definite answer on the micro question, but my best advice would be to go to our office of advising’s website and pull one of the advisors’ email addresses off. Write them and ask them, because I feel like since it’s an internal transfer they might be a bit lenient. It could go either way though, because while micro is micro, there’s a lot of application at the end of the semester that’s directly applicable to business rather than economic theory like CAS is.</p>

<p>If you’re trying to transfer, don’t take statistics unless it’s in Stern. We have a 6-credit course (as I think CAS does) but the additional 2 focus on something entirely different. It’s regressions for financial modeling. As for Calc, all Stern kids are required to take just one semester of any calc. Some kids take more to look good, but I didn’t.</p>

28

<p>Thanks for the responses hellodocks, really appreciate it. Anyway, more questions:</p>

<p>How did you spend your freshmen year? I’ve heard from upperclassmen that in terms of looking for internships, firms are MUCH more open to sophomores (and juniors obviously) than to freshmen, and that as a freshmen you should mainly just focus on your academics, and if lucky, a summer internship at ANYTHING (doesn’t have to be prestigious or anything, just somewhat finance related). So back to the question, how did you spend your freshmen year?</p>

<p>And second, what do you usually do during your free time at NYU? </p>

<p>Third, did you mainly land your interviews via careernet or via networking?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

29

<p>Thanks so much for the response!</p>

30

<p>You’re welcome, glad to help. =)</p>

<p>It’s absolutely impossible to find something serious as a freshman. It’s challenging, to say the least, as a sophomore. In all the searching I’ve done this year, I’ve only found one program for freshmen, and it was only a week-long mentorship event. It was at BarCap I believe. Other than that, there’s nothing apart from the one-in-a-thousand position that get posted to CareerNet that’s actually willing to even <em>look</em> at freshmen. I’d definitely recommend that you immerse yourself in school your first year. Right now I’m sitting on the cusp of most firms’ GPA cutoffs because I didn’t do as well first year as I should’ve. Don’t be like that. Freshman year is challenging in many ways, but if you get the right courses and good profs it isn’t hard to pull a 4.0 if you’re willing to do work. You probably won’t have more than two or three Stern courses your whole first year, so it’s definitely your time to shine and get ahead of the others by beasting the easy courses. Sophomore year is the exact opposite; right now I have four Stern classes and one elective.</p>

<p>CareerNet in and of itself isn’t that great in terms of opportunities, at least for Sternies. Maybe it’s because we aim higher, but at least 50% of the postings are for unpaid jobs or internships for academic credit, and of those those that aren’t a lot either aren’t directly relevant to what we pursue or require junior status or higher. There’s a surprising number of full-time positions too, most in the $40-80k range (a bit below what most Sternies want).</p>

<p>Everything I’ve landed so far has come as a result of my participation in this diversity recruiting panel which has been an absolute dream. Through it I’ve been able to attend nine corporate info seminars (two BarCap, three Goldman, Citi, two JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley) and many interviews (so far: two Goldman, one Bank of America, one RBS + tomorrow: S&P, TD Bank, Quench Interactive, JPMorgan). Not all of those were ‘simply sign-up and get it,’ I suppose you could attribute all the repeats to either good performance in the first as well as networking from the seminars to obtain the solo interview.</p>

<p>Free time . . . ugh. I literally haven’t had time to breathe in the past two weeks. Every single exam possible has been right now, and coupled with all the recruiting I barely sleep. Tonight was fairly calm, I got back from the JPMorgan event by 10 and got a chance to clean up a bit which was really nice. Some of the things that are personally important to me are fitness and nutrition, so a lot of my free time goes to the gym. I’m part of quite a few extracurricular societies too, so right now I’m trying to sort out which ones I want to pursue e-board positions in for next year. I try to go to shows as often as I get the chance, there’s tons of opportunities here that you feel just miserable not taking advantage of. I’ve been to Broadway a number of times, ice skating in Central and Bryant Park, movies and private screenings around different places, museums, food markets … I think the beauty of this place is that you can do whatever your heart can dream of and still feel like you’re not capitalizing enough.</p>

31

<p>Anyone else have any questions? Midterms are over now, much more time on my hands. =)</p>

32

<p>I know that you attend Stern, but I was wondering if you had any insight as to the competitiveness of the College of Nursing? I’ve heard the nursing students are generally more isolated from the bulk of the NYU student body–is this true? Any information would help! Thank you for doing this. :)</p>

33

<p>What do you think are my chances, lol?</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1022659-you-know-you-want-chance-me-chance-back-well.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1022659-you-know-you-want-chance-me-chance-back-well.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

34

<p>@ef
Sure. That’s definitely true. I hardly know anyone in Nursing. The two upperclassman grades wear their scrubs daily, so that’s how you identify (the few of) them, but it’s hard to tell the underclassmen. Also, to the best of my knowledge, while kids from CAS, Stern, sometimes LSP, and Tisch all fulfill their gen-ed requirements in the same sections of the same classes (i.e. our Natural Science, Calc, ConWest, or Writing The Essay), the Nursing kids get their own exclusive sections and have less gen-eds to fulfill. I only know one girl in that school, and she’s really busy all the time. She’s nice though.</p>

<p>@sasasa
Can’t say anything definitive about the other schools because I don’t go there, but I’d say high match/low reach for Stern. They’re a bit more forgiving with ED applicants, but while you’re 2-section SAT is good, many of your APs aren’t geared towards business nor are they all excellent scores. Good SAT II: History score, great recommendation sources (Wharton and UVA are also top-5 undergrad business programs), and top 10% of class puts you in a good range. AP Comp Sci is good too, because admissions officers know a ton of bulge bracket firms recruit heavily on the quant and programming side.</p>

<p>Drawbacks: A C+ on high school transcript, unless it was in freshman year so that your transcript showed steady improvement thereafter, that kind of hurts. SAT II: Math I is a low subject test score, especially for the easier of the two subject math exams.</p>

<p>Neutral: Not applying for aid will not affect your chances in the slightest. We’re a need-blind school. </p>

<p>Help? =)</p>

35

<p>For Stern, can a good essay tip the balance between being admitted or rejected? My stats are pretty awful and the impression that I’ve been given is that Stern is very numbers-oriented - but can a good essay and good supplements make things happen despite average statistics?</p>

36

<p>Hi!!
I applied ED to Stern, and I am really nervous right now.
I applied through commonapp, and I left the class rank reporting part empty because it changes…should I call in and report the most recent rank? My GPA went up(i think it’s my summer course grades), should I report that if it’s only like 3.56 to 3.58?
Our school does unweighted grades, so should I weigh my GPA and report that ASAP?
Last question, do I have to do the ED financial aid?</p>

<p>Thank you so much for answering my question! Your answers will be very much appreciated!</p>

37

<p>Thanks for the response again hello. Yeah, I just wanted you to chance NYU lol.</p>

<p>I would of taken more “business classes” but our school doesn’t offer any good business AP’s. I do wish I had time to retake SAT subject tests and even SATs with studying, but I guess it’s too late now.</p>

38

<p>Is it true that Stern is very unpredictable in terms of acceptances (i.e. 4.0/2400 Students getting rejected)? I hope it plays in my favor.</p>

<p>-Have you ever had any internships? Where?
-What is on-campus recruiting like?
-Do MAJOR banks and firms advertise internships at NYU?
-Are professors accesible? Are they generally kind (i.e. not biased towards a specific race or religious group)
-How sizable is the muslim community there?
-Finally =) do you know any Saudi Arabians at Stern? :smiley: odd question, I know</p>

<p>Surprise question: Am I at any advantage for being Black+Asian? I know that Asians are the most represented minority, but blacks are not (my father is black).</p>

<p>Thank you! I owe you!</p>

39

<p>BUMP!! A few more, please :smiley:
-What is a good SAT score for international students applying to Stern? Keep in mind that Im not applying for Financial Aid, paying from personal funds.</p>

<p>-My cumulative GPA is 3.41 :S This mostly because I screwed up quite a bit in grade 9 (I got 2-3 70s, 2 in useless subjects, art and woodshop, and the third in math :S), did much better in 10th grade (about 3.58), and got a 4.0 in grade 11. Hopefully keeping it up for grade 12 !! Will stern understand and see that I put in a genuine effort to improve and succeed?? </p>

<p>Explanation for earlier problems: I moved to a different province in Canada, so my math was a bit behind and I had to adjust to the new environment (I used to go to an islamic school in a different province). I pulled 96% on pre-calculus last year, surely they will understand??</p>

40

<p>@audrey
Definitely. I credit my acceptance solely to the fact that my personal statements were exactly that: my personality bottled into four little 250-word prompts. I honestly look at those as the single most expressive bit of writing I’ve ever done. I had some above average SAT scores (except Math), decent recommendations, and no real ECs worth mentioning. Here I am though. =)</p>

<p>@evey
Don’t be nervous. What will happen will happen, and stressing about it can’t change anything. Leaving things blank is never a good idea. It looks like you have something you want to hide. It’s better to report something that isn’t fantastic than it is to leave something blank because you’re afraid it’ll reflect negatively. I would definitely encourage you to call or email, try to spin it like you didn’t know your rank and wanted to let them know now.</p>

<p>If your school does unweighted GPAs, report that and make it quite clear its unweighted. Unweighted is actually the preferred method, because the whole concept of a B in a harder class being equivalent to an A in an easier class simply doesn’t float with many people. Also, if you applied ED, you definitely need to do the ED aid application; that’s a no-brainer, the two go together.</p>

<p>@sasasa
Yeah, I understand. Remember though, it’s not always too late to do SATs again. If you take them again and do rush score delivery, you can send them updated scores after the original application deadline as a mark of your continued interest as well as a demonstration of your improved performance.</p>

<p>@konig
I’m sure some kids like that have been rejected, but it probably was become of some mitigating factor like poor recommendations, poor writing submissions, horrible ECs, or something that adversely impacted their application. </p>

<p>Internships: I had one at a boutique hedge fund with minimal hours for three months where I basically manipulated data in Excel. Nothing serious so far, which is quite the norm for freshmen. I’m deep, deep, deep in the recruitment process for the coming summer. Hopefully something pans out, BarCap and Goldman are my top two so let’s hope something comes of it.</p>

<p>OCR: Very serious. Every single bulge bracket firm looks at NYU as a tremendous source of human capital, particularly Stern. October and November are packed with corporate info sessions, seminars, and recruiting events. Interviews normally run Jan-Feb, with decisions by March. If you’re studying abroad (like me), there’s an accelerated process.</p>

<p>Major banks: That’s what referred to as the bulge bracket. Look it up on wikipedia or something if you don’t know what that refers to. And yes. This past month I’ve been to events with Citi, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman, BarCap, Bank of America Merrill, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, and more. Oddly enough though, UBS hasn’t been here that I know of, but one of my really good friends interns there already.</p>

<p>Profs: Yes? I don’t think you can really survive in the upper echelons of the corporate world at this point by being biased or bigoted, openly at least. Most of the people here at Stern have a demonstrated commitment to education and development and have a keen interest in the students. The other NYU schools’ profs not so much, but Stern definitely. </p>

<p>Muslim community: Stern’s is first and foremost Asian (61%), then roughly equally Caucasian and Arab/Indian. Plus there are tons of cultural groups here, so finding a place to fit in isn’t hard at all for the most part. Saudi Arabians, not off the top of my head because I don’t make it a habit of directly asking people their specific ethnicity. There’s mad brown kids here though, so I’m sure Saudis are represented well.</p>

<p>Black kids: Haha right. I’m part of something pathetic like 3.6% African-American students in Stern. I doubt it’ll explicitly help you, but maybe it might give you a favorable advantage if they’re looking for a broader student body.</p>

<p>International: Applying or not applying for aid does nothing to help or hurt your app. I can’t state that enough. It’s a need-blind institution, so how much money you need is not a factor in your admission.</p>

<p>GPA: They state openly somewhere on their admissions page that its common among institutions of higher education to look for progression and improvement within the four years. They’ll understand if you had a bad start but had a turnaround as well. It’s the same thing here in college. Employers aren’t going to hate you for having a not-great GPA after freshman year when they see a trend of improvement.</p>