New York University

Date: Jun 30 2005
Major: Math (This Major's Salary over time)
My experience at NYU overall has been a positive one. That's not to say it wasn't easy. In fact, I have social anxiety disorder, so I'm not the type of person who one would think would thrive in the city. However, contrary to what many seem to say, I don't think the city is at all cold and impersonal. To be honest, after living there a year I found my home in a suburb of Memphis, TN to be so quiet that I now find it almost depressing. It does take a certain personality type; I had two roommates both transfer who were from North Carolina and wanted to go to school closer to home. If you have a personality that's good at adapting (and that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be "outgoing"), then NYU is definitely for you.

Regarding the social life, there are a LOT of rich, very annoying people. I came to NYU a liberal, and even though I still consider myself one, I honestly found a lot of NYU liberals just as closed-minded as some of the fundamentalist Christians from the South. It took me my entire freshman year to meet some friends, but once I did I realized that I could have have made a better choice than NYU.

I also have more respect for NYU's administration than most. I work a part time job as an office assistant in the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs, and they are constantly thinking about the students to the point where they often ask myself and the other student helpers about our opinions on various issues. A school with as many students as NYU can't be expected to be extremely personal.

NYU has been very good academically. Although I listed myself as a math major, I internally transfered to Stern for this coming semester (Fall '05) to major in Intensive Statistics and Information Systems. From my experience, I had teachers that were both unbelievably good and…less than good. The primary bane of the MAP program is WTE, or Writing the Essay. Regarding that I have one piece of advice - try to get Pat Hoy as your teacher. I am not a writing person at all, but I cannot emphasize enough what an incredible teacher he is. He, unfortunately, is also only one of like a hundred WTE teachers, most of whom are grad students. My other MAP courses, ConWest and World Cultures: Japan, also had incredible teachers and TA's. I actually only had one bad teacher. Really bad. One test the entire semester, and lectures were word for word from the textbook.

It really depends on the kind of person you are, whether or not you'll thrive at NYU. But you don't have to be some extreme go-getter; if you do things like go to clubs regularly you'll meet people. Of course if you do absolutely NOTHING you might have some problems, but even if you do have problems the University Health Center has a great counseling department at your disposal.