New York University

Date: Apr 08 2009
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
NYU was a colossal waste of my time and money. I picked it because the director of scholarship programs told be my scholarship included a couple of trips to Europe during school breaks. I got there to learn that it was actually a different scholarship program that took those trips, not mine. They did let me go on the second of the two trips, but I felt like an idiot, because the people in charge of the group knew I had just gotten to go along because of some administrator's mistake. While my own scholarship did cover about half the tuition when I started, I am still $80k in debt. They did not increase my financial aid by one penny when my parents lost all ability to contribute money toward my education (and my FAFSA form verified that they were unable to contribute.) I was a junior with excellent grades, writing awards, and no financial support, but NYU did not care.

I had virtually no guidance when it came to picking classes and majors. I did not know which departments were excellent, and which ones were disorganized messes. I picked English, and it turned out that the English Department was a disorganized mess. I did not learn anything in any of my English classes. I read, and I learned a bit through that, but the lectures and assignments were pointless. They rarely challenged me or made me think.

The grade inflation was out of control. I got A-'s when I wrote my papers hours before they were due and failed to proofread them. I got A's when I proofread. I love a challenge. I like to work hard, especially on my writing, and I like my hard work to be rewarded. But there was no reward for a really good paper in the English department. There were A's … but they were, ironically, cheap.

The lack of social life I found at NYU was thoroughly depressing. I am a quiet person, but also a smart, kind, and creative one. Everywhere I have lived, worked, or studied, with the exception of NYU, I have found plenty of friends. I met plenty of people I liked at NYU, but did not make the cut for any of the cliques that I wanted to join, which I blame on the fact that I was a few years older than most of my peers, and ended up with very, very few NYU friends.

The facilities were awful, especially the library. It was the singular in its poor construction—it's loud, heavy furniture and doors, it's carpet-less, echoing prison-like walls and floors, it's lack of any of the books I needed, it's loud, cell-phone-talking, crunchy-snack-eating students, and it's terrible lack of seating. The dorms were dingy and tiny with paper-thin walls, and the form to find a compatible roommate was optional and hard to find on the housing website.

Nothing, however, tops the rudeness of the administrators, their unwillingness to discuss student problems in a direct manner, and their viciously defensive attitudes. The worst interaction I had with one of their hired idiots came at the end of my junior year when I found an internship through their website that turned out to be a complete violation of labor laws. The employer was depending on my, profiting from my long days sweating over her phones and files, not paying me, and not allowing me to take lunch breaks. Now, federal minimum wage laws (including FSLA) do not allow for-profit companies to depend on or profit from unpaid interns, and obviously being denied a lunch break is not allowed. So after I quit, I thought, "Gee, why don't I let NYU know that this person who is adverting through their career center is breaking labor laws with her interns?" The first person I spoke with chastised me for "unprofessional behavior" because I had quit. When I told her about FSLA she laughed and said, "Well, that's a federal law, not our law." When I went to higher-level career center administrators, they dodged all my questions, defended the first person I had talked to, and told me not too politely that they were not legally responsible for the content on their career center website. When I brought the issue to the attention of the deans of my college, all they did was reiterate the fact that the university's policy of posting known FLSA violators on their website had been vetted by their legal committee. A month or two later they came out with this statement saying that backing out on a position obtained through the career center would be grounds for loss of all career center services.

I could go on all day with these stories. I did have a couple of classes I liked, but that was it. Now I just cringe when I see those ugly purple flags flapping all over the city. Goddamn NYU, go on cheating unsuspecting young people out of vast amounts of money and out of their chance for a real college education if you must—why didn't I go to University of Michigan??—but don't flaunt your stupid purple victory flags in the face of every poor sap of a graduate who still lives in the city. Let me quietly hand over most of each pay check to Sallie Mae and forget you.