BU SMG vs. NYU Stern

grzyba
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 02:00:22 +0000

I’m not in SMG, but I go to BU and some of my friends are in SMG, so here’s what I know!

1) Academics: Basically, when you’re in SMG you get a major in “Business Administration” and you can only concentrate in what you’d want to do, for example: Finance, Accounting, International Business. Some people don’t like how you can’t really pin your major down to one topic, and how your major would just be business with a concentration in so-and-so. It’s nice though that you don’t have to declare your concentration until junior year and if you decide you don’t want to do finance anymore, you can concentrate in something else and it won’t hurt you in terms of academics because all the basic/general requirements for all the concentrations are the same.

2) Prestige: Stern > SMG. BU as a whole holds a lot of prestige, but so does NYU.

3) Internship Opportunities: It really depends if you’re willing to get out there. SMG does offer services to help people find internships and so does BU career services though.

4) Student life / happiness: Boston is a smaller city than New York and it’s known to be more friendly. Students that go to BU generally love BU.

5) Safety, sense of security: BU has a really safe campus and SMG is right in the center of it. I have no idea about Stern.

6) Best for getting accepted into a top-tier grad school (MBA): Probably Stern, unless you’d want to go to grad school for an MBA at BU. There are a bunch of good professors though.

7) Social scene: SMG has a pretty good social scene. A lot of students make friends with those who are in their presentation groups or those who are in the same discussion sections. There are also SMG-only floors in some of the dorms. SMG students do tend to hang out with other SMG students, especially as you progress to your upperclassman years, as SMG involves a lot of collaboration and working in groups.

8) Any other point you think is relevant: If you haven’t visited either, you should! If you can’t, the next best thing is to comb through the websites of each business school.