WUSTL Olin vs. NYU Stern

vbball90
Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:58:37 +0000

The schools are very similar for many “paper-based” criteria: Average starting salary (both between $55k - $60k), faculty student ratio, average incoming test scores, and academic quality.

The biggest difference is going to be Location (middle of a city, versus a traditional college campus in a medium sized city) and Student Body size. Not all 18 year olds are ready to start living in the middle of NYC in a school with 19,000 other undergraduates and no “campus”. NYU’s Stern school has over 2,000 undergrads alone.

I personally feel that Wash U has that perfect balance between city/suburban, medium sized student body, medium sized city, and plenty of opportunities within a tighter-knit feeling student body.

If you are debating at all whether you want the “NYC experience” then NYU may not be right for you at this point in your life. I feel that the “NYC experience” is something you need to be 100% excited to do. Certainly, there are many people who really want to do that right after high school, but I think you need to be absolutely ready to start living in NYC at so young. You can always do graduate school there later (which most people tend to agree that your MBA school is more important than Undergrad school… and Wash U undergrad is ranked #1 for “MBA feeder school”)

Please keep in mind that there are lots of other Finance jobs besides companies with an address on Wall Street. You can do Finance in any other city, the major I-Banks and Finance firms have offices all around the country , and many people do analysis/investing/finance for large corporations like GE or Microsoft for example. I don’t quite get what the appeal of working directly on Wall Street is. Sure, there are both Wash U and NYU grads represented in those companies on the Street of Wall, but that is possibly the WORST place to be working right now, anyway.

Just my two cents.