Calling all NYU Fall '09 applicants!

Hi everyone! I've never before posted on GMAT Club but you folks seem to be a wise and supportive bunch so I thought it couldn't hurt to ask your opinion. I was recently accepted to NYU Stern and this week received an interview invite to Yale SOM. I'm debating whether or not it'll be worth my while to proceed with the Yale interview because I think that, even if Yale wound up accepting me, I'd stick with Stern. (Not to mention the fact that I'm an international applicant so heading out to New Haven will be an investment in time and money.) I like the fact that Stern is in NYC (will make the job search easier), has a larger class size (greater networking potential among fellow students), and is known for being a fairly strong finance school. That being said, Yale has been picking up momentum in recent years, is developing a name for itself as a finance school, and the Yale brand carries significant weight in some circles. To put my question into context, I come from a finance background and hope to continue working in finance post-MBA. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

anyone hear anything recently?

I was placed on the Waitlist in Feb and haven't heard anything new. I did hear that the waitlist should start to receive final decisions around the end of May.

Is anyone else having trouble getting on to the new student page?

smokedpotatoes2 - were you just admitted? If so, congratulations!

Stern Follies 2009 - Sterndog Millionaire

My friends put a ridiculous amount of work into this for follies this year. Enjoy (you probably might see bits at Preterm, or other "influences" for it from the class of 2009's time here)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml_kKmiB2TA - Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNO5DERVCGk - Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UtFrfiyNdM - Part 3

LOL. These were fantastic, 3underscore. Part 3, especially so.

Sorry forgot to update but I decided to withdraw my NYU app.

presently trying to decide between Duke, IESE, and Yale. Hopefully the Yale welcome weekend will shed some light as to my decision.

I was originally waitlisted w/out interview and today was invited to interview for Summer Start!! I am very excited and wonder from others who had summer start interviews how their experience was and how different this might be from other interviews?

Thanks!

Mate this is AWESOME. I was rolling on the floor at Banksta's paradise....

smokedpotatoes2 - I'm actually faced with the same decision on Yale! I'm hoping the welcoming weekend will be rocking

I'm also facing the NYU Stern / Yale SOM dilemma... I resolved to attend both admit weekends before making a final decision. The Stern admit weekend was great -- I left impressed. Given that I come from a finance background and plan on pursuing a finance path post-MBA, I feel like Stern probably makes the most sense (particularly from a recruiting standpoint in this difficult environment where firms are likely to focus their efforts on "core" or local schools) but I'm going into the SOM weekend with an open mind and we'll see if they're able to convince me otherwise.

Mbahopeful2009 - glad to know there are other people out there faced with similar difficulties. I actually attended the Stern admit weekend and I would have to say that I wasn't that impressed. I also come from finance and I felt that the crowd I met were somewhat a bit too focused on finance. There wasn't the diversity I was looking for in a b-school, which I'm hoping to find at Yale. The focus on finance wasn't so much the problem, but I didn't find that I liked the caliber of people that I met. I'm sure I didn't get to meet everyone, but I'm just giving my plain observation. Moreover, everyone is so afraid of not finding a job in bschool. However, the fact of the matter is that at Stern, you'll be competing with a whole lot of other people who want the same positions. My perspective is that first, at Yale you might be faced with less competition since the diversity is so much gerater, but second, when and if the economy picks up it's going to be easier for everyone to find jobs.

Safest is to check out both schools. Let me know what you think though.

I am also in finance and had to choose between Yale and Stern. I consulted with many of my MDs who used to lead recruiting team for Lehman and Morgan. They don't recall having dedicated recruiting teams to Yale for IB/Capital Markets/IM institutional business. A few for Private Wealth Management. They do recruit at Yale undergrad for all divisions. Things might have changed since then and I know all BB banks recruit at Yale, but I googled my company's new associate roster going back historically and indeed found very few Yale MBAs.

I guess, you will certainly face less competition among Yale students for Finance jobs, however, banks will likely take fewer candidates from Yale overall, maybe even cut their recruiting at Yale given the current economic crisis and small intake from Yale every year...that worries me...less competition for positions is great, but no positions to compete for is even worse....

Well, I attended both the NYU Stern admit weekend and the Yale SOM admit weekend (seemed like there were a few others who did the same from the people I met). The schools are very different, but I had a good time at both and honestly feel I can't go wrong with either; I'm finding myself quite torn and still second guessing myself somewhat. For the benefit of others in the same bind, I wrote out a list of what I felt were the pros and cons for each school:

NYU Stern Pros:
- Manhattan location means lots to do and more importantly easy access to the big banks (I'm going to try for a banking internship)
- strong reputation in finance means solid recruiting opportunities
- larger class size (about 420 to 450) means greater networking potential among classmates
- large alumni network, many of whom are in the financial services industry
- ability to take some very cool finance courses through the Courant Institute

NYU Stern Cons:
- lots of students are from New York so there's less incentive for them to mix and mingle with the class; admit weekend already felt a bit cliquy with many of the NYC folks hanging together
- many people coming from finance background; not as diverse a student body and might be nice to mix with different "types" of people (particularly given that I've been in finance for the last 6 years)
- a large chunk of the class will likely be looking to get into finance/banking which could mean stiff competition if the banks reserve just a certain number of slots for Stern interns; I'm picturing recruiting teams of 6 to 10 from the bulge brackets giving corporate presentations with 150 to 200 students lining up to try to make an impression on the bank reps

Yale SOM Pros:
- Yale is in a university town which leads to a very tight-knit student body and great community feel (originally I didn't think this was that important but it's something that struck me immediately as a positive aspect of the school when attending admit weekend); there's a great bar on campus just for Yale grad students where the law, med, and business school students mix and hang out -- if I'm going to live in NYC for a couple years after school anyway it might be nice to enjoy that kind of environment
- small class size (about 200 students per year) means you get to know literally everyone in your class quite well and everyone seems to be very supportive of one another; I got a really great vibe from the student body
- great faculty to student ratio (about 1 to 4) means excellent access to profs and intimate class sizes
- the school has taken a progressive approach to management education and redesigned the curriculum in 2006 to quite a bit of fanfare from students and recruiters (Stanford remodeled its curriculum the following year using a similar approach); given that I have a pretty strong finance background this would be an interesting way to round myself out
- the school has been on a hiring binge picking up great profs (e.g. Andrew Metrick) and a new Career Development Office manager from Wharton; the school has a massive endowment and seems committed to raising the stature of the business school
- Yale's brand and potential networking opportunities that go along with it (access to places like the Yale Club in Manhattan)

Yale SOM Cons:
- New Haven is a 1.5 to 2 hour train ride from NYC and so is somewhat removed from the action
- Yale is not considered to be a "core" finance school like Stern so some of the boutique firms that might go to Stern to recruit may not come to Yale and would therefore require more legwork to pursue and I'm also concerned that if a bulge bracket firm were to trim recruiting efforts I could see there being perhaps a proportionately larger effect at Yale relative to NYU
- Yale's MBA program is relatively new (about 30 or 35 years old) and the class size is small which means a small alumni network; that being said, we do get access to the whole Yale University alumni database (with the exception of the law school)

I think the important questions that need to be asked when making the Yale SOM / NYU Stern decision are:

1) Does NYU Stern grant a definitive recruiting advantage? A significant reason that many of us are pursuing an MBA is to land our dream job (or a job that can lead us to our dream job) coming out of school. I was originally concerned that the recruiting opportunities for banking would be significantly better at NYU. After speaking with numerous students at Yale who went through the banking recruitment process as well as alumni and the Career Development Office, it seems like the school actually does reasonably well. This year about 40 students were pursuing banking internships and about half of them converted. Not sure how that compares with the NYU IB success ratio but, from speaking with Yale students, it sounded like those who really put in the time and did the information interviews, jumped through all the hoops, etc. were successful. Some even argued that they were able to distinguish themselves more effectively than had they been in a larger class with a larger percentage of students vying for a job in IB.

2) Do I want to live in NYC and reap the benefits of a big city or do I want to live in a college town and enjoy the vibe that goes along with that? That's a personal choice that will be different for everyone. Of course there are benefits to both.

At the moment, weighing all factors, I'm leaning slightly Yale primarily due to the tight-knit feel and community vibe (silly though that may sound). I certainly wouldn't say I got the feel that Yale SOM is a "better" program than NYU Stern, just different.

Comments, especially from those making a similar decision, are most welcome.

SternFinance2011: Just curious, given your screen name, should we assume that you wound up choosing Stern for the reasons you cited?

MBAHopeful2009, Yale and NYU both have excellent business schools; you can't go wrong at either.

Since this is the NYU Stern '09 thread however, I wanted to chime in and respond to some of the points you raised.

There are indeed a lot of people from the New York area at Stern, just as there are a lot of people from the Northeast at Yale. The fact that NYU's Pre-View weekend was easiest to attend for people already living in New York might have made it seem like the student body was overwhelmingly from the tri-state area. If you look at the admitted student forums however, you know that isn't true.

Some of the newly admitted students in New York had met informally a few times before Pre-View weekend, and hence some of us knew each other already. I wouldn't necessarily call that cliquey however, and that is certainly not a tendency that will carry over to when the semester starts. Furthermore, when I was still researching schools, I specifically asked each Stern student I spoke to whether they continued to spend more time socially with their non-NYU friends in New York? Their response each time was that a lot of students were actually good friends with each other and that after a few weeks their NYU Stern and non-NYU social networks sort of meshed together and everyone ended up meeting a lot of new people that way.

And finally maybe I'm just assuming a lot of things here, but if you signed up for the finance "track" at Pre-View weekend, spent time at the finance tables during the student activities fair and attended the alumni in finance luncheon - it's no surprise that most of the people you met were interested in finance. My experience was slightly different. I signed up for the marketing "track," hung out at the marketing and media & entertainment tables during the student activities fair and sat in on lunch at an alumni in marketing table. As a result, I talked to only perhaps 6-8 people from finance backgrounds, only about half of which intended to return to finance proper. Things seemed fairly diverse to me, but maybe that's just an individual perception.

I do not know much yet about how recruiting works at either NYU Stern or Yale SOM but I would ask you to consider whether it's a better idea to face less competition for less full-time/internship positions, or more competition for more full-time/internship positions?

Finally, I would also encourage you to visit the Yale Club (perhaps with a member who went to Yale or Dartmouth?) and see for yourself what networking potential that place might really offer. For what it's worth, NYU (and Columbia) alumni are offered membership privileges at the Princeton Club.

Hey, MBAHopeful2009, yep, had my mind set on Stern now. It's a really hard decision for me, but as you said, the main purpose of MBA is to get a job you want. I want to do banking so I went and talked with as many senior people in the field as I can. Their perspectives dictate where those banks will recruit. They all unanimously said Stern should be a more reasonable choice given my goal.

I do feel Yale has a more close knit community and feel very comfortable with it (still keep in touch with some of the Yale admits), but I went to college in a small town with many "I want to save the world type friends", I think i'd like to try something different. Indeed, NYU students may not be around on campus as much as Yale students, but that's just the real world. In the real business world, people are not forced to get together and make friends. It takes skills to bring people together and establish relationships without the help of geographical limitations. I want to hone that skill.

As far as competition is concerned, Stern is definitely a lot more competitive in finance field, however, I am aiming to get into one of the most competitive industries, so I won't mind getting ready for that while at school. Besides, standing out from competition doesn't have to come at the expense of friendship. Learning how to be competitive while winning allies and friends is critical in today's challenging business environment. I believe, Stern's environment provides such a training ground.

O, well, Yale is certainly a fantastic school, but for what I want to do, Stern somehow has the edge. But no matter where you end up, the most important thing is to take full advantage of the opportunities and resources any school can provide you.

Good luck with your decision. Believe me, it's a relief once you make up your mind....