<p>I’m a junior in Stern</p>
<p>Keep in mind the opinion of NYU tends to decline as time goes by, so try to keep that in mind since it’s mostly freshmen on this board who haven’t experienced the negative sides of NYU (although the responses seem on target in this thread)</p>
<p>1) Community. To most people who haven’t experienced college, they don’t think this is a huge issue. Although it’s an ambigious word, NYU is lacking in every definition. During Freshmen year everybody lives reasonably close to WSP and you make close friends with most people in your dorms…and everything is great. For example me and my guy friends would have poker night every Thursday followed by Zen sushi for some cheap beer (We all had early recitations Friday, but still wanted to go out Thursdays)…and everything was grand. Then Sophomore year I had Carlyle, and most of them had Water Street - which is a 30-60 minute commute depending on the hours. NYU is probably one of the few schools in which distance will actually lessen friendships. Furthermore, since there are no real campus wide events, no real opportunities to meet up. For a while you make an effort and commute, but most of the time you just say “***** it” and stay in your area. Sophomore year, aside from your best friends freshmen year, you will probably have a different clique primarily because of distance issues . Not this is necessarily bad, but developing strong friendships over years is important…and I think this factor is why people say they have so few “true” friends. Not because they are shy or nyu is unfriendly…its just that by Sophomore year and definitely Junior year you can’t run out for quick drinks or a quick snack with your freshmen year friends since they live so far away, and it sucks.</p>
<p>2) People in Stern are tools and think if they work 90-100 hours a week as an I-banker maybe people will like them. A lot of them go out 2 or 3 times A SEMESTER and spend the rest of the time studying to maintain 3.9+ and its very demoralizing. </p>
<p>3) hipsters aren’t too bad, they throw some fun parties in williamsburg (Rubulad, Danger list). Can be a little pretentious, but they are pretty impressionable, so you can mold them if need be. </p>
<p>4) Stern’s curve is still too rough when it comes to recruiting, a 3.5 is a 3.5 to most recruiters, yet a 3.5 from HYP is exponentially easier due to grade inflation. </p>
<p>5) NYU does half-assed attempted to fix student dissatisfaction…which then causes us to be so low in the ranks. NYU and Stern specifically should be ranked MUCH higher based on SAT/GPA , but we always get nerfed because we finish near last in Peer evaluation surveys (which make up ~30% of rankings) </p>
<p>6) People have unreasonable expections. NYU is the number 1 dream school, yet 30’s in rankings…yet people applying don’t seem to compute this disconnect. Furthermore, It’s not "cool manhattanites’ that are applying to NYU is people who want to BE “cool manhattanites.” It’s a bunch of people trying to hard to fit in. As an aggegrate, this becomes problematic. People come to NYU expecting these awesome people - because they want to be one of these awesome Manhattan people they see in Felicity. Consequently, everyone starts to act like a character in a movie - since thats what they see from everyone else - and it just seems so fake</p>
<p>7) People don’t understand college costs </p>
<p>8) CAS has some BAD classes</p>
<p>9) People here are irrational politically. They don’t even understand the issues, but protest and join groups so they can fit in. (I’m a liberal but NYU has turned me more moderate just seeing how crazy some people here are). Furthermore, no one is even really passionate - they yell a lot and protest a lot…but don’t actually do anything that requires work and effort. Unlike the 60’s and 70’s, College students here aren’t changing anything, and aren’t even attempting to beyond half-assed rhetoric.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, NYU isn’t too bad. I have a great internship (Which I’m at right now haha) and will have a great paying job when I graduate. I’ve made a lot of close friends despite the commuting issues. I would probably pick NYU again. There are good things, Manhattan is fun as hell - I’d get bored as heck if I had to go to frat parties every night. The dorms are nice despite being over priced and spread out. Stern has some of the best professors in the world, and recruiting is good (although it should be much better).</p>