<p>Poly used to be a contender with caltech and MIT in the mid-late century for innovation and was placed near them in the early U.S news days, however apparently due to a very corrupt administration rotating in in the early 90s they went spiraling out of control and eventually bankrupted themselves before subsidizing the entire university to NYU. It’s a typical engineering school since the underqualified attendees in the previous years were all slaughtered and eliminated by the workload and the last two years’ worth of students are qualified enough to land in the NYU SAT bracket. Engineering schools tend to be full of people that either love science and creation of mechanisms or people that for all intents and purposes don’t want to be there. From what I’ve seen comparing notes with friends in CAS, our math exams and lab experiments are MUCH more applied and the latter can sometimes be a safety hazard (efficient synthesis of aspirin, etc). Culture-wise? Multiplayer video games, hacking contests, Magic the Gathering, and strangely enough, Dominoes are big forms of recreation here. There are tons of international students from India and China, and most of the female population consists of the latter. There will probably be a sort of “crushed souls” feel in the air after the first semester when everyone’s been through the sinking realization that there definitely is not a generous curve in poly.</p>