Current Stern Sophomore: Ask Me

<p>Thank you, evolving! The process was so emotionally difficult, but my parents are fine with Stern now. Phew!</p>

<p>4 things

  1. thanks for answering my previous questions, and im going to stern next year, just paid my deposit today!
    2)this should really be a sticky thread instead of the stern FAQ, but you cant really do anything about that
  2. i was planning on rooming in rubin because it was about 4k cheaper than 3n and 3k cheaper than hayden, founders, and goddard and its has a/c and dining room, what is the reason that you say that it should be at the bottom of the list.(like you said we dont spend much time in there anyways)
  3. can you expand on paid vs unpaid internships, i guess this is a broad request but in terms how hard each one is to get relatively, how much a typical pay would be for a summer internship, i know you said 5 digits, but could you narrow it down :)</p>

<p>@lullina
Yes, you may, I have both my Stern and my NYU email accounts forwarding to an alternate Gmail account. Just this month, both NYU and Stern rolled over to Google, so whenever you log into your email account for either you’ll get the Gmail interface.</p>

<p>Did my thread help you influence your parents at all? :D</p>

<p>@pqr

  1. You’re welcome.
  2. Haha yeah, that would be nice.
  3. If it’s cheaper at NYU, that means it’s worse. The rooms aren’t very new, the dining hall is absolutely by far and away the worst on campus, and the location is pretty terrible compared to the other freshman buildings. I know people who hated it and I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as my home.
  4. Paid: during the school year, if you can get a paid internship from a small or mid-sized firm, for anything finance-related you’ll typically get $10-20 an hour. For the summer, in the BB your compensation is based off of a prorated package, meaning if the full-time analysts get a $70,000 salary for the year, you get the same paycheck they do each week, so roughly $1300-1400 a week pre-tax. Then you typically earn overtime for anything past 40 hours, so you can make anywhere between $13,000-25,000 as a summer analyst in banking or trading.</p>

<p>Unpaid are for credit and a gyp in my opinion. You pay the school for the right to work for free for a firm. Not a great deal in my book. Firms typically offer these if they’re a non-profit, or a start-up, or a really great name that a lot of kids want on their resume. Most things in finance aren’t unpaid, and if they are, you should look at them as a bit suspect.</p>

<p>Double post, sorry, spotty internet connection at the moment.</p>

<p>@hellodocks
Yes it did, thank you very much for answering our questions. I hope I’m just as successful as you at Stern!</p>

<p>mind=blown, thanks for all the help, and i wont hesitate to ask ;)</p>

<p>How many classes does a typical Stern Freshman take per semester? can you just give a summary of what the first-semester schedule for a freshman looks like, thanks!!</p>

<p>So I posted my own thread on this question but I just discovered this great thread. I submitted by deposit to NYU Stern today and I’m trying to decide on housing. Just based on proximity to Stern I’ve narrowed it down to Goddard, Hayden and Weinstein. From your past posts it seems that Weinstein is “prison” like and not so appealing, but I’m curious about the Goddard experience. My tour guide when I visited a week ago was raving about Goddard and the intellectual streams and residential college activities. I’m really interested in these activities but I’m not sure if they’ll take up too much time. I know Stern has a heavy courseload…did you find it was too much with activities at Goddard and other ECs…or is it really not a big deal. Also, what’s your opinion on Hayden?</p>

<p>Sorry if there’s any repetition in these questions and thanks again for this thread.</p>

<p>Actually, you can minor in computer science. You just can’t minor in web programming and applications because it conflicts with the info systems major. Calc II is also a prerequisite for many of the Stern statistics courses, so it’s helpful to take that in freshman year should one want to major in stats, take stats electives, or major/minor in anything quantitative in CAS like math or comp sci.</p>

<p>To above posts, I’m a Stern freshman right now, and I find the workload quite easy. A lot of people complain about their workloads, but I think everyone just gets caught up with college life hanging out with friends, staying up ridiculously late, etc. In high school, we had to wake up at 7am every day, but people here are complaining about 9:30am and 11am classes. Some people even skip lectures then complain that their midterms or finals were really hard when they didn’t even do any extra studying to keep up. I guess college life just gives that kind of illusion. Just make sure you keep up with your classes, and you’ll be fine.</p>

<p>Your typical schedule will probably look like this in the fall:

  • Writing the Essay/Commerce and Culture
  • Calculus I/II/III/Linear Algebra
  • Microeconomics
  • Liberal Arts Requirement</p>

<p>Writing the Essay MUST be taken in the fall. If you have at least a certain cutoff in your SAT I Writing (last year it was 740, two years ago it was 700, I believe this year is 720 but not sure, make sure to look it up), you can take Commerce and Culture. Writing the Essay is a very heavy workload and difficult to get an A- or A in. This is just based on what I’ve heard from friends. I took Commerce and Culture, which consists of three “cycles.” Each week, you read/view one text then write one forum post response and one 250-300 word response, so it’s about two pages of writing per week. Each cycle, you have to write a 5-6 page paper. There are about 8 texts to read and 6 films to watch total. The three cycles concern identity, culture in the world of commerce, and the impact of commerce on society, in that order. I didn’t particularly enjoy the class, but it sounded a bit better than WTE from the feedback from my friends, so meh. Grading felt a little tougher in CC, although that just may be from my bias due to having not done too well in that class. Both WTE and CC are small, around 15 students. I think a lot of what you get out of the class depends on your professor though.</p>

<p>Calc I is an easy A, but Calc II is a requirement for later stats/math/comp sci classes if you’re interested in those. If you’re not, just take Calc I. Calc II is hard, and there’s no point taking it if your later classes won’t need it. If you’ve done well in AP Calc BC, don’t think that Calc II will be easy. Even though it covers the same material, it is much harder and more intensive. You might want to do your research to decide what to take. Take Calc III or Linear Algebra if you’re really confident, or if you’re sure you’re doing something like double majoring in math.</p>

<p>You need to have at least a 4 (or 3 maybe, not sure) on AP Calc AB or BC to take Micro, so hopefully, you have that. There’ll be about 300 people in your lecture, but don’t take this as an incentive to skip class. Make absolutely sure you do your best, and don’t be satisfied with a 90% on a quiz or exam in this class, as this class will probably be your first and possibly harshest experience with the Stern curve in terms of absolute grades. Last fall, the cutoff for an A was about a 97%, and I believe the A- cutoff wasn’t that far off. If you don’t have a proficient grade on your AP Calc AB/BC, you’ll take a liberal arts requirement instead. Spring micro will be smaller, about 50-60 students per lecture.</p>

<p>For your liberal arts requirements, you’ll need to take one Texts & Ideas class, one Cultures & Contexts/Global Cultures class, and one Natural Science class. Nat sci can be covered through AP credit with a 4 in AP biology, chemistry, physics, or I believe environmental science. You have to take a T&I class and either a C&C or global cultures class though. There are lots of choices for each, and their easiness/hardness mostly depends on your professor/TA. As for C&C vs. global cultures, a lot of people opt to take global cultures because of the lack of recitation sections, and global cultures classes are much smaller (20-25 students) than C&C lectures (50-300 ish). C&C may be easier though, depending on the professors. Each type of class will generally have you writing about 4-5 papers total. Anyways, it’s really up to you which you take and in what order. I believe Antiquity & the 19th Century and The Deliberating Citizen were the easiest T&I classes last fall, and How Things Work was the easiest nat sci class last fall, although this is just from what I’ve heard. I don’t know much about nat sci because I opted out of it myself with AP credits.</p>

<p>Of course, this is just a typical schedule, and you’re free to take whatever you want in whatever order you want with the exception of your writing class, which has to be taken in the fall.</p>

<p>@lullina
Ah, that’s good to hear. Don’t worry about it, stay committed and I’m sure you will.</p>

<p>@pqr
No problem.</p>

<p>@srb
It’s normally 4 4-credit classes. Some kids will have 3 4-credit classes + 1 6-credit, or 4 4-credits and 1 2-credit for a total of 18. The upper-level courses for your majors are 3-credits though, so some juniors and seniors have 18 credits semesters with 6 different classes.</p>

<p>@runi
I personally loved it. It can be time-consuming if you let it, but I figured it was a great way to destress. I got to go to amazing stuff like Broadway shows, book readings, park trips, sightseeing, all for free or like $5-10. Plus, the 90-second commute really paid off. You could literally roll out of bed at 9:26 and be in class in Stern on time.</p>

<p>Hayden was kind of a hipster scene. There’s the eco-friendly dining hall, and since it’s the most popular with the ED applicants, there was always the prototypical NYU kid: a bunch of gay kids, hipsters, vegans, and artsy types. That might change since apparently ED kids no longer get priority in housing choice. It’s a good dorm if you can get it I suppose, but Goddard was perfect for me.</p>

<p>A couple points to counter ToastedCheerios’.

  1. You cannot minor in IS. [Information</a>, Operations & Management Sciences Department | Academic Programs](<a href=“http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/ioms/academic.cfm?doc_id=2548]Information”>http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/ioms/academic.cfm?doc_id=2548) As the class of 2015 you can take it as one of up to three concentrations since we no longer have majors, but it isn’t offered as a minor since the credit requirement for a concentration is so small already.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Agreed that the workload itself can end up being easy. I’ve said on probably all 32 pages so far that the hardest part won’t be the schoolwork, it’ll be the adjustment process and getting used to new freedoms, friends, places, responsibilities, and pressures.</p></li>
<li><p>The cutoff to get out of WTE and into C&C is 740 on the SAT Writing. C&C has different topics each semester.</p></li>
<li><p>Calc III is considered ‘easier’ than Calc II by most.</p></li>
<li><p>Your experience with papers was different than mine. My World Cultures (old version of T&I) had 5 papers total and that was the most. BIP had 3, ConWest had 2, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>NatSci is a mixed bag, take How Things Work and it’s the easiest A you’ll have. Take Human Genomes or Quarks and the Cosmos and you’re in for a ride.</p></li>
<li><br>

<br></li>
</ol>

<p>Is it possible to get rescinded because of bad AP scores? (hypothetical…)</p>

<p>so im terrible at calc and i was just planning on bombing my ap exam so i would be placed in calc 1 and I wouldnt have to worry about being in calc 2, but this whole microecon situation just messes up that plan. So, should i try and do well on the ap exam and suffer through calc 2 at nyu for the ability to take fall microecon and other statistic classes(would it be a problem to concentrate in finance and business administration with only calc 1) or should i go ahead with my plan and be placed into calc 1 and suffer through spring microecon?</p>

<p>You can delay microecon until fall of your sophomore year. You might take on principles of financial accounting on the spring of your freshman year.</p>

<p>Thank you toasted cheerios and hellodocks…you’re responses have been great.</p>

<p>I actually got an 800 on SAT I writing so is Commerce+Culture worth taking even if it’s harder? Also I am taking Calc BC now but I feel shaky on the subject. Will taking Calc I as a freshman vs Calc II, cause problems if I want to take computer science/stats classes later? Also if I don’t take micro in the fall will that be problematic schedule wise?</p>

<p>AP scores will never go against you, don’t be worried about good/bad AP scores. NYU won’t hold a bad AP score against you, and if you’re still worried, you don’t have to send it to NYU anyways. Good AP scores only matter if you want them to matter. Even if you get a 5 in AP Calc BC, taking higher level math is voluntary because all you need is Calc I to graduate (unless you’re taking advanced math/stats/etc. classes later that need Calc II). Likewise for AP stats, you can take the 4/6-credit stats class even if you’ve gotten a 5 on the AP exam because the opt-out placement exam is voluntary (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, Stern lets you take an opt-out placement exam in stats if you get 4 or 5 on the AP stats exam, and if you pass it, you get to waive 4 credits worth of stats requirements and gain 4 credits worth of Stern electives). If you don’t want to take higher level math, you can still take both Calc I and Micro in the fall if you have the necessary AP calc score.</p>

<p>I just checked on Albert, and it says Commerce and Culture requires 720-740 in SAT I Writing… maybe if you get higher than 740 this year, you’ll be able to skip out of your fall writing class entirely? I’m not entirely sure. Between Writing the Essay and Commerce and Culture though, I would say take Commerce and Culture just because the workload is lighter. Difficulty/grading varies a lot between teachers in WTE. Taking Calc I then deciding you need Calc II later won’t be much of a problem, you’ll just need to use 4 elective credits on Calc II, which might only be a problem if you’re strained for elective credit doing some combination of double majoring in CAS, studying abroad, double majoring and minoring, etc. As far as calc goes, just make sure you can wrap your head around what exactly a function is and what exactly a derivative is. That’ll make you understand micro a lot better because most of it’s about marginal change, and a lot of people don’t totally understand that concept in context, especially with the wacky axes. Taking micro in the fall or spring is up to you, just make sure you take it in your freshman year, as it’s a prerequisite for a few classes for next year. Same thing for Statistics for Business Control.</p>

<p>Thanks Cheerios, that’s exactly what I was looking for… I’m gonna get BC and Stats credits this year (pretty confident I’ll get 5’s in those) and Chem and Physics which I can’t get credit for anyway, but the main one I’m worried about is Spanish, which I’d be lucky to get a 3 in…</p>

<p>Also the fact that I can take Micro and Calc I at the same time makes me feel alot better cuz like everyone said, Calc I would be easier, and I still wanted to take Micro my freshman year. I’m glad I can do that haha.</p>

<p>Thanks for the answers!</p>

<p>Does CLEP not count at all?</p>

<p>From what I’ve read and heard, typical nyu weekends consist of hard liquor, and lots of it. I’m not into serious drinking, and I was wondering if it’s hard for someone who likes to have fun without a ton of drinking to fit in at nyu. thanks in advance for your response!</p>

<p>Yes, you can find all kinds of people … including down-to-earth, not into alcohol, like to chill at Starbucks, etc.</p>