My son will be visiting NYU for a computer science conference/competition in November. Although he really enjoys these computer science competitions, his current plan is to major in physics. He will be pretty busy with the competition. Should he try to take time to visit the physics department? It looks like physics is in Manhattan, while engineering is in Brooklyn. Google maps says they are 18 minutes apart, but I don’t know if that is realistic.
He is a junior, so doesn’t have a list of colleges to apply to finalized yet. His primary criteria will be a research university where undergrads have access to doing interesting undergrad research. Other criteria include access to computer science for physics majors and a sufficiently nerdy STEM population. Large universities are fine with him.
Being from the West Coast, we don’t know much about NYU other than that they have an urban campus and are highly priced with poor financial aid. We would not be eligible for financial aid in any case. Being a finalist in this competition does come with a scholarship of some amount, but perhaps only to the School of Engineering at NYU. In any case, the maximum scholarship for this competition would not make NYU cheaper than something like UC Berkeley in state.
At a similar event at CMU, he decided that the physics department was probably not right for him, and that he would only apply to CMU if he decided to major in CS.