This year (high school junior) I have become very interested in finance and trying to land a job on Wall Street. Previously, I had been interested in Engineering, eyeing schools such as Georgia Tech, MIT, and Stanford. Just today, I saw that NYU grads land a lot more jobs on Wall Street than many other schools. I have done some research on the school, but wanted to hear your opinions on the campus life, location, size, classes, etc. because I think I may seriously consider going here if I cannot make it into Columbia, which is my dream school to study finance.
You cannot study finance at Columbia. The closest thing to it would be Economics.
NYU is a large university (25,000 undergraduate students, 50,000 total students). It lacks a traditional campus in the sense that there is no well defined campus area. Buildings are scattered around the city. However, most buildings are in nice parts of Manhattan. As such, campus life is probably bound to city life.