Advice for Finance major

SJ2727
Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:09:50 +0000

blossom:

Adcom’s do NOT wish to see themselves as another cog in the “Goldman Sachs Apprenticeship program”, even if that’s what students hope to accomplish by enrolling in their university. They still (anachronistically?) believe they are academic institutions first and foremost, and intellectual curiosity– breadth AND depth, not “I’m going to make a lot of money by the time I’m 30” careerism is still in fashion.

To underline this point: When we visited NYU with D19, the admissions talk mentioned there are very few cases where an essay totally makes or breaks an application, but one example she gave was exactly like this: a kid who basically said “I want to go to Stern so i can make lots of money”. She said there was debate in the adcom about this, with one point of view being that at least this kid was being honest, but they ultimately decided his essay didn’t reflect the type of person they wanted in their program (apparently the rest of his application was stellar).