NYU Shanghai

shanghaipat44
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 09:41:44 +0000

So I have to make a statement to give all you young kids a heads up especially since I had to have this talk with my cousin in September. I made an account specifically for this reason since my cousin told me this site existed. A quick description of myself before people get defensive, I am not Chinese or East Asian but have been speaking Chinese since I was 10 years old and have reached native level. I did my undergraduate and MBA in America and a masters taught in Chinese in China. I currently work at an elite global business services firm in their Shanghai office. NYUSH has reached out to us before about joining their internship fairs since we are a huge recruiter of Stern students back in NYC but we have always declined. I want to give you some insights that I gave my little cousin when I encouraged him to focus on NYU Stern or NYU NY campus instead of NYUSH. (These are also some of the reason my firm gave to NYUSH. I volunteer in the recruiting efforts in China so am a bit more familiar with the issues than most people.)

First Reason: You will not become fluent in Chinese in an English university even if its based in Shanghai and that is a huge deal breaker in China. IF you are not a local Chinese you will then be competing against students from Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Tongji University, etc who are the elite of China in Shanghai. Many of these kids, especially from Fudan speak exceptional English. NYU isn’t the only western school in China, there is one run by the UK university Nottingham in Ningbo and we have had foreigners from there apply for to our SH office for positions. We have never given them an offer. For college students in China we give part time internships during the year that we call “PTAs”. The roles they do need complete mastery of Chinese which NYU SH does not provide. Surprisingly the foreign students we do give summer internships to that are foreigner come from western universities but have spent a lot of time at intensive Chinese programs or enrolled directly in Chinese universities. I am usually one of the first interviewers. If the student is in Shanghai I will invite him to my office and give him a Chinese test. They will have 30 minutes to write (not type) an analysis of some issue in the newspaper and then give myself and my colleagues an oral argument that supports their analysis in Chinese. They submit their paper to me and it shows me if they have the writing, speak, and listening capabilities to survive in our office which is nearly 95% conducted in Chinese. Even then we have never given a full time offer to them during my time here. We have had 2 interns that weren’t Chinese at our Greater China Offices and were given full time offers to offices in London and Boston if I remember correctly.

Second Reason: As much as NYU will try to deny it, from us the employer perspective, NYUSH is a lesser brand than the traditional NYU. We don’t care that there are courses taught by Stern professors. When we think of NYU we think of New York University, not New York Abu Dhabi or New York Shanghai. I don’t know about non-profits or startups, but for business services like consulting, finance, or even if you want to go to capital hill, it will be an impediment. It sucks, it’s not fair, but its true. It’s too much of an opportunity cost for an employer to select NYUSH student studying business versus a NYU Stern student or a Wharton student. If you go back to America you will already have issues competing with students already in the states as well as lose valuable on campus recruiting efforts. Our firm’s graduate recruits mainly come from our target schools that we have on campus recruiting events for.

When my cousin told me he was going to do ED for NYU SH I called up his parents and told them I thought it was a very bad idea. While I laud all of you for having a much more global perspective than 99% of Americans, I truly think you guys are jumping the shark. If you love China, want to work in China, or really speak Chinese, there are many good alternatives. I have met some Americans that 100% believe China is the future so they are transferring from American universities to China’s elite universities like Tsinghua or Fudan to graduate from the Harvards or Yales of China and master Chinese. Others that are less extreme study abroad, double major in Chinese and spend their summers and abroad years fully immersed in a Chinese speaking environment.
In many ways I feel NYU SH does a disservice to you. You do not get the full value of NYU or its resources being away from New York. You do not gait the same weight in degree. This issue isn’t unique to NYU SH, Yale NUS in Singapore also has this issue even though it’s slight less serious since it has the word Yale stamped on it. Maybe 10-15 years from now branch campuses will be viewed differently but I personally doubt it.

Don’t get me wrong Shanghai is an amazing city. I have been here for 4 years now, met my fiancee here, and love Shanghai much more than New York when lived there as a student at Columbia. I definitely encourage those who want a global lifestyle to work and live in Shanghai at one point in their lives. But NYUSH in my opinion puts its student at a serious disadvantage. Again this is just one person’s opinion and I’m sure many of you especially the new admits don’t want to hear this kind of stuff. I’m not saying that going to NYU SH sets its students on a path with no future, but what I am saying is that it’s a solution looking for a problem to solve.