Why is Stern so overrated?

College Majors Business Major
21

<p>I agree with you hupkorea, the problem I have with every stern kid I have spoken to is they have this idea in their head that Stern is the best business school in the world after Wharton which is not true. If anything they are tied with about half a dozen other schools.</p>

<p>I don't mind conceited people, I expect it from kids who go to HYP etc. but when guys who go to Stern try to tell you how great they are for getting a degree in finance from NYU it's just silly, and I have to tell them that.</p>

22

<p>This thread: <a href="http://www.ibankingoasis.com/node/2089%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ibankingoasis.com/node/2089&lt;/a> gives a good idea of how Stern is regarded by investment banks.</p>

23

<p>I think when you're a recruiter and you're looking for students; it's simple : student quality. For top finance jobs; you're going to want aggressive / intelligent / well-rounded individuals. Stern has many such students with dynamite personalities. I personally have never attended Stern but having lived and studied college at Cooper Union (right next to NYU); I've learned quite a bit about NYU and its students.</p>

<p>Just pay a visit to Stern and look at the caliber of its biz. students and you'll find that many of them are very smart and well rounded.</p>

24

<p>"I guarantee you Sternies are going to have no advantage after training and will probably curse the thousands and years they spent learning finance when others got paid to learn it in a matter of months."</p>

<p>You make it sound like Stern kids only did finance...which is uh....true, actually.</p>

<p>But the fact is, a large portion of our classes are electives and business core. We do come out as well-rounded in business and whatever other **** we want, and not only finance. In fact, a finance major is only 12 credits (that's about a semester of classes, which, last time I checked, was actually slightly under four months) out of 128 credits required for graduation. </p>

<p>I'm a finance and pre-med major, and no Sternie I know has this "idea that it's the best school second to Wharton." I think people tend to be much more realistic of their position in business school, hence the competition. Honestly though, I haven't heard of any real, substantiated stories of people doing everything they can to ruin other people's grades to jump ahead of the curve. But I have heard plenty of unsubstantiated ones coming from Columbia, Harvard, and whatever other school.</p>

<p>Obviously, I'm going to be defensive because I go to Stern, but I'm willing to admit that Stern was a crap decision and that I should've gone to UMich business (in-state tuition too, ***) and would have so much more fun there than in New York. But honestly, a lot of the things said here are nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors and opinions that are poorly concealed flames against a school most of you know nothing about. A campus tour and having friends who go there does not count.</p>

<p>Stern does suck though. It's a large, soulless bureaucracy doing all it can to compell you to sell your first-born to make it through college. Labs are also overcrowded all the time with idiots who need to check their Facebook for 3 hours at a time.</p>

25

<ol>
<li>You are in college because you’re proving that you’re already pre-qualified, motivated, and interested to the people who are going to hire you after college. You are not there to get wasted as hell or to get an education. This the reality; to believe that college is to “discover oneself” or get an “education” is na</li>
</ol>

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<p>utilitymaximized, i am a director for a startup company that revenues over 15 million dollars a year and have started my own international business company at cornell to provide sourcing for many businesses here. so talk your fancy *****. you are the apotome of your kind, look down on your peers and proud of being the corporate slave. most successful wall street people didnt go to an undergraduate business school anyway. it can be very rewarding to work in a corporate setting, where sky is the limit, but your 4 years of college life is defined by "proving that you’re already pre-qualified, motivated, and interested to the people who are going to hire you after college", you really need to reconsider the purpose of an education, or whether your life is worth anything. No need to be so narrow minded and enforce your will upon others by saying stuff like "I will have fun doing expected returns, risk analysis, amortizations calculations, and learning stochastic optimization while you’re doing your liberal arts degree somewhere else and we’ll see who gets ahead in life." If that is your thinking, you can make millions, but you are a failure at life. and... has anyone ever taught you, in business, its who you know, not what you know? so why brag about your knowledge in "expected returns, risk analysis, amortizations calculations, and learning stochastic optimization"?</p>

27

<p>
[quote]
utilitymaximized, i am a director for a startup company that revenues over 15 million dollars a year and have started my own international business company at cornell to provide sourcing for many businesses here. so talk your fancy *****. you are the apotome of your kind, look down on your peers and proud of being the corporate slave. most successful wall street people didnt go to an undergraduate business school anyway. it can be very rewarding to work in a corporate setting, where sky is the limit, but your 4 years of college life is defined by "proving that you’re already pre-qualified, motivated, and interested to the people who are going to hire you after college", you really need to reconsider the purpose of an education, or whether your life is worth anything. No need to be so narrow minded and enforce your will upon others by saying stuff like "I will have fun doing expected returns, risk analysis, amortizations calculations, and learning stochastic optimization while you’re doing your liberal arts degree somewhere else and we’ll see who gets ahead in life." If that is your thinking, you can make millions, but you are a failure at life. and... has anyone ever taught you, in business, its who you know, not what you know? so why brag about your knowledge in "expected returns, risk analysis, amortizations calculations, and learning stochastic optimization"?

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<p>And I'm dating BoA.</p>

<p>Right, we can all live in our fantasies worlds but lying on the internet is probably at the bottom of what most people can accomplish.</p>

28

<p>
[quote]
No, liberal arts degrees aren’t more useful. At best, an economics degree is the only one with real world feasibility and potential to help you make better choices and Stern offers both theory and policy-based concentrations for those. Either way, you are not trying to tell employers “I am a well-rounded person” but instead, you are trying to inform them that “I am already pre-qualified to work at the firm and I have the ability to maximize the firm’s profits.” Companies don’t care about your interests; they care about your ability to work within their firm and your ability to generate substantive value for them.

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<p>If Sternies are so qualified tell me why the second best finance school in the nation doesn't get recruited as well as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, and Duke (I'm probably missing a few this is from memory). Keep in mind, these schools don't have a business major and many students who go on to Ibanking don't major in econ.</p>

<p>Facts are that business majors don't "qualify" anyone for a job in banking or any other business job, the only time your major matters is when your applying for MM banks where it is required that you have a major in a related field. </p>

<p>keep telling yourself that your degree will get you ahead but be prepared for kids who went to a better school than you and know about as much business as it takes to cram in two weeks, get the job.</p>

29

<p>utilitymaximized, I appreciate your passion for Stern, but I think your claims are flawed: </p>

<p>First of all, liberal arts degrees are, in fact, very useful. I would go as far as to say that they are more useful than a finance degree in the business world. You learn to think differently and critically in many liberal art subjects, which I think Stern curriculum lacks at this point. IMO, Sternies in general make great entry-level analysists. But I would be surprised to see many of them becoming directors and CEOs. Once you get to the management level, your need a different skillset. You are no longer asked to do financial statement analysis or market research. Instead, you are asked to make a decision based on such data. No finance or accounting degree will ever teach you how to do that. </p>

<p>Second, Stern is a good school in terms of educational quality and prestige, but by no means an 'elite' school like HYPS or Wharton. Deal with it. It's an opinion shared by many.</p>

<p>Third, college experience is not about just binge drinking. I just participated in intramural soccer tournament a few weeks ago and made several really good friends. I engage in political debates, go to comedy clubs and watch baseball and drink with them. That's the college experience everyone's talking about.</p>

<p>The only thing I agree with you is that finance degree is only 12 credits and Stern, and we are allowed to explore liberal art subjects (which not many people do).</p>

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<p>Look, kids, I don't think anyone's making the the claim that Stern is better than whatever Ivy you're going to roll out of in four years, we're just defending it by saying that not everyone in Stern is a pretentious f u c k who makes these Stern vs. school x threads and trying to argue that it's better than Harvard or Princeton. </p>

<p>
[quote]
utilitymaximized, i am a director for a startup company that revenues over 15 million dollars a year and have started my own international business company at cornell to provide sourcing for many businesses here. so talk your fancy *****. you are the apotome of your kind, look down on your peers and proud of being the corporate slave. most successful wall street people didnt go to an undergraduate business school anyway.

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<p>Can you please shut up about Cornell for one second and just look at your posts? Your preachiness towards anyone going to a school you consider less than Cornell makes you worse than any stereotypical, suit-wearing Sternie standing around Gould plaza with his laptop and cell phone pretending to be important. It's great that you've personally accomplished all these things, but it doesn't mean everyone who doesn't go to Stern is doing this. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they're not, whether they go to Cornell or not. If you need to continually post about the greatness of Cornell AEM to get over your general bitterness, go ahead, but don't try to belittle schools you know nothing about in the process.</p>

<p>
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on a seperate note, how hard is it to pledge AKPsi at Stern?

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I've seen kids actually cry over it. It's a huge time commitment in addition to going to classes and schoolwork (which I've found to actually be about 0 hours a day except the night before exams) and you're doing nothing but that for about...8 weeks? But you get to know a lot of people really well in the process, which is a nice bonus given that NYU in general doesn't seem to have a close-knit community.</p>

31

<p>
[quote]
If Sternies are so qualified tell me why the second best finance school in the nation doesn't get recruited as well as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, and Duke (I'm probably missing a few this is from memory). Keep in mind, these schools don't have a business major and many students who go on to Ibanking don't major in econ.</p>

<p>Facts are that business majors don't "qualify" anyone for a job in banking or any other business job, the only time your major matters is when your applying for MM banks where it is required that you have a major in a related field. </p>

<p>keep telling yourself that your degree will get you ahead but be prepared for kids who went to a better school than you and know about as much business as it takes to cram in two weeks, get the job.

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<p>Fact and figures please? Stern’s median starting salary is virtually the same as same as Wharton’s with a similar median SAT score. Stern’s exposure to recruiters from Wall Street is certainly as good if not better than the schools you listed. The only field that Stern remotely lags in is exposure to consulting firm recruitment.</p>

<p>You’re deluding yourself when you buy into the whole “oh, your major and whatever you do for undergraduate college doesn’t matter” myth. Given two candidates, one with the business background and one without, who would the corporation pick? Precisely, the one with the background because you cost less to train and there’s less time from hiring to when you’re producing profits. It’s all about comparative advantage.</p>

<p>Keep telling yourself that recruiters care more about school prestige more than profit maximization and alumni connections. No matter how much you tell yourself that it’s not; well-roundedness was a myth in the college admissions process and it’s a myth in the job market. People who specialize do their jobs and tasks better and firms know it.</p>

<p>
[quote]
utilitymaximized, I appreciate your passion for Stern, but I think your claims are flawed: </p>

<p>First of all, liberal arts degrees are, in fact, very useful. I would go as far as to say that they are more useful than a finance degree in the business world. You learn to think differently and critically in many liberal art subjects, which I think Stern curriculum lacks at this point. IMO, Sternies in general make great entry-level analysists. But I would be surprised to see many of them becoming directors and CEOs. Once you get to the management level, your need a different skillset. You are no longer asked to do financial statement analysis or market research. Instead, you are asked to make a decision based on such data. No finance or accounting degree will ever teach you how to do that. </p>

<p>Second, Stern is a good school in terms of educational quality and prestige, but by no means an 'elite' school like HYPS or Wharton. Deal with it. It's an opinion shared by many.</p>

<p>Third, college experience is not about just binge drinking. I just participated in intramural soccer tournament a few weeks ago and made several really good friends. I engage in political debates, go to comedy clubs and watch baseball and drink with them. That's the college experience everyone's talking about.</p>

<p>The only thing I agree with you is that finance degree is only 12 credits and Stern, and we are allowed to explore liberal art subjects (which not many people do).

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<p>Liberal arts degrees are not useful. The whole “think differently and critically” methodology is not developed through a college experience. You either have the ability to be visionary or you don’t. Management does not take a different skill set than the entry-level analyst; it takes a much more developed version of the analytical skill set. You don’t think CEO think analyze, rationalize, and think logically?</p>

<p>Tell me, what do you do when you do market research or financial statement analysis? Do you somehow intentionally avoid making conclusions or judgments? If you do, you’re a horrible analysis in the first place. Analytical methodology is critical to rational utility maximization. The reason the US is so poorly managed is because we have a culture of relying on “intuition” rather than rational economic analysis.</p>

<p>Many people think Harvard and the Ivies are overrated and completely worthless. Does it mean they are? Perhaps but most likely not. Collectivism is absolutely ridiculous; maybe a lot of people think Stern is worse than the Ivies but if they’re just the kids trolling college forums like the people here, I really don’t think I care nor should I.</p>

<p>Third, you need to work on your reading analytical skills because if it wasn’t apparent to you that I was being humorous when making the binge drinking comments, then I don’t know what to tell you. The college experience is the dorm experience. You also completely miss the point; it’s not whether NYU has binge drinking or not but rather, that there’s nothing lacking about what NYU provides for the college experience just because there are no fenced gates and walls surrounding our school buildings.</p>

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<p>Almost everyone in Stern who gets a finance degrees gets a high paying finaince job, I really don't see how thats over rated nor how a finance degree is too narrow. Our average Sat score is 1441, which is above most ivies. NYC = Awesome</p>

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<p>apparently, stern is not as good as HYPSMW. to all those people who dont like stern, other than those six though, is stern all that bad in terms of recruitment compared to the rest?</p>

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<p>the three posters above me...exactly my point= Stern people are so disillusioned with themselves...</p>

<p>seriously? stern has a high sat score? We're not talkign high school here buddy...
finance degree is worth more? umm... recruiters actually prefer econ and math over finance generally because they are much more quantitative; finance is an easy subject and easy to learn... a stern or wharton finance degree may be different, but in general, finance degrees are pretty much worthless
again, the college experience is what you make of it. sure, for stern kids it is the dorm experience, since you guys stay in your dorms all day studying anyway...
"almost everyone in stern ...gets a high paying finance job" not sure that is correct; i know a lot of stern students who don't, and even if it is correct, other students at top schools don't all want to go into finance... im sure econ and math majors at ivies have just as good of a chance to break into finance with ANY degree as long as they include some quantitative degree than a stern finance degree</p>

<p>i guess i'm fighting an uphill battle... it's totally not worth arguing against sternies about stern</p>

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<p>^^^ uhhh am i one of the three posters your talking about? i dont even go to stern. my question wasn't a rhetorical question and im not trying to talk up stern. im just trying to find out more stuff about it and how its recruitment is compared to schools other than HYPSMW.</p>

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<p>I'm in Stern and go out drinking/clubbing 4-5 nights a week, although there is a a large percentage of nerds (more so than CAS) It's no worse than other business schools and the IVYS. theres plenty of normal people, you can just hang out with people from CAS, Tisch, Gallatin....Stern only makes up 10% of the NYU population. The City is AMAZING and there so much more to do there than in other school where you're forced to stay on campus and join a frat, they're really pathetic from the schools I've visited (Cornell and Binghamton).</p>

<p>What is a college suppose to be rated upon if not Strength of the student body, strength of the teachers, and recruitment? We excel at all 3, I really don't get bipolarbears hatred...and its pretty funny he exhibits every trait he hates about nyu.</p>

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<p>utilitymaximized:

[quote]
Liberal arts degrees are not useful. The whole “think differently and critically” methodology is not developed through a college experience.

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<p>then why the hell are you in college paying over $40,000 a year (or waste scholarship money/financial aid that could've gone to someone else)? You can hire a finance tutor from Wharton and gain 12 credit worth of knowledge at a much cheaper rate.</p>

<p>If you really think that college education doesn't help students to develop analytical skills, I really don't know what to tell you. Sadly, your statement proves the reason why few top consulting firms recruit at Stern. I personally love the school and all the great opportunities that it has given me, but your claim is blatantly ignorant and downright foolish at best. please don't go around telling people that liberal arts degrees are useless for your own sake (and for Stern's reputation).</p>

<p>job training can be done without 4 years of college and a B.S degree.</p>

<p>the world economy doesn't always operate on the lagrangian formula. the demand curve is not always a nice straight line and taking derivatives of a function will not help you maximize utility or profit. they are hypothetical tools to give you an insight.</p>

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<p>people should notice that all of utilitymaximized's posts are in this thread (all three of them). makes one wonder if he/she created an account just to post about this topic.</p>

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<p>utility may not have had an account before...so he/she created one because he/she felt passionate about this subject.</p>

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<p>on a side note I love how everyone keeps saying "stern kids are arrogant and elitist" in this thread and others, but the people saying it are acting just as arrogant and condescending...atleast we're not hypocrites.</p>