How do people view NYU?

cobrat
Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:16:20 +0000

monydad:

My sense is, as you move away from the tri-state area, NYUs reputation gets elevated somewhat, vs. when you are here. Because for people further way, New York City is itself a big deal, and being a good school named “New York” located right there seems like a big deal. On the other hand the city is less impressive to people who already live in the city.

For most NYU students, if people ask “why didn’t you go to one of the ivies instead?” it would be because they couldn’t get in. (With the exception, there will be some cross-admits with the contract colleges or hotel school at Cornell, all but one of these schools cost less for in-state, and they each have specialized curricula; the yields for those schools suggests that they would win most of these cross-admit battles). The more logical questions would be “why didn’t you go to BU, Rochester or Lehigh instead?”- to which the answer is BU et al cost just as much- or “why didn’t you go to Binghamton instead?”- which might be a good question, if you are in-state.



In addition to the proximity factor is the fact NYU’s marketing machine has gone into overdrive since the late 1990’s.

When I heard about how NYU’s undergrad reputation has skyrocketed in the early aughts compared to just a decade before, I was astounded at how it had gained an Ivy facade. Especially considering how NYU Stern/CAS admitted around 1/3 of my graduating urban public high school class…including some from the bottom of the class such as yours truly.

Accepting admission to NYU…especially CAS was considered a sign one had limited options other than resorting to attend less respectable institutions such as Fordham, party schools like BC/BU, or the CUNYs as a non-special program(i.e. Sophie Davis) student.

Even at a recent HS alumni reunion a few weeks back, the main topic I kept hearing from NYU attending classmates was mainly complaining about how they are still paying off their undergrad debt or have only done so for a couple of years…and we’ve been out of college for 10+ years.

There was certainly no apparent NYU pride exhibited by them in contrast to some who attended and graduated from Ivy/Ivy-type undergrads or better yet…Ivy/Ivy-type grad schools.

In fact, the only HS classmates who exhibited NYU pride of any sort over the years were those who turned down Stern/CAS for undergrad, attended a CUNY/SUNY college at in-state/free rates/other school on full/near-full ride scholarships, and then went off to NYU for grad/professional schools…mainly Stern MBA, law school, and PhD programs in GSAS.

As for Binghamton vs NYU…it was actually much more challenging to get into Binghamton than NYU back when my classmates and I were applying for colleges. A reason why NYU was considered more of a “safety school” than Binghamton by most high school classmates.