<p>My daughter is considering attending Fordham University in NYC Rosehill Campus to study international business in the business honors program.</p>
<p>How is the overall Fordham reputation?</p>
<p>How is the biz school viewed?</p>
<p>How is the alumni network?</p>
<p>How is the Rosehill neighborhood?</p>
<p>My son is a junior at Fordham Rose Hill – an English Major in the Honors Program. My husband graduated from Fordham in the mid 1970s. We didn’t encourage him to attend until he decided that he wanted to attend college in NYC and the decision came down to Fordham and NYU (he was wait listed at Columbia). </p>
<p>My impression is that Fordham is an up and coming Catholic (Jesuit) university. It has seen remarkable growth in the past 20 years. When my son was considering it, it was bestowed with the distinction of the “hottest Catholic school in the country” by US News and World Report. It has a very tight network of alumni benefactors and its $500 million capital campaign in these scary times for university endowments says something about its ability to raise big bucks to build its brand. </p>
<p>On the negative side, I think it suffers from an identity crisis of sorts with half of the campus in midtown Manhattan at Lincoln Center…as well as the lack of bigtime (spectator) athletics that many students look for in a world class university. It seems determined to rebuild its basketball and football programs with the addition of a new athletic complex and more resources devoted to recruitment and a beefed up coaching staff. </p>
<p>The undergraduate B school program is decent (ranked somewhere in the 20s)…the school is renovating an old dorm into the new headquarters for the Business School so it will be beneficial to have everything housed under a single roof. Its MBA and law school programs are quite stellar – your daughter would have a leg up on admission from CBA if that was a direction she was interested in pursuing. </p>
<p>The gated campus is quite lovely and bordered on one side by the NY Botanical Gardens and Bronx Zoo. Arthur Avenue, a Little Italy type neighborhood of bistros and old world markets, is a short walk away as is various Metro North and NYC transit stops. Rose Hill really lives up to its tag line, “Fordham is my school…New York City is my campus.” My son has a part-time job in lower Manhattan and spends a lot of time off campus exploring the city. Fr. McShane, the University President, is a very dynamic leader and deserves much of the credit for Fordham’s rising reputation. </p>
<p>My son is one of 250+ juniors studying abroad this semester and the Study Abroad office has been accommodating and responsive. CBA has its own network of global programs, so if your daughter is interested in international study and travel, there’s a lot to mine in that area. A friend of my son’s spent her second semester sophomore year at Fordham/CBA’s campus in London and had a wonderful experience.</p>
<p>If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll send you my private e-mail address.</p>
<p>Re Rose Hill (Belmont): My recent-graduate daughter works very near the main Fordham campus. It is a vibrant neighborhood with lots of shops – some of them local, some of them national brands – and tons of people all the time, of many different ethnicities. She does not feel unsafe walking around it. Note that she grew up in a city, and went both to high school and to college in neighborhoods many consider marginal, so she is not spooked by such things. Rose Hill differs from those neighborhoods by having a lot more going on.</p>