NYU: The Big Picture
The best thing is the location. Living in new york is amazing. I'd change the advising. NYU has the worst advisers I've ever met. That might be because I'm in CAS, but the undergraduate advising is Horrible. There's a high turnover rate of advisers. After my first semester freshmen year my adviser left and I haven't had a set adviser since then. It's hard to try and plan your life out with someone who has no idea who you are or what you want to do with your career. And even if you explain to them they don't really guide as to what classes to take. I've wasted at least 4 courses doing things that I didn't need or want to do to get my major/minor/ or fulfill interests. That's a LOT of money wasted.
I think the school is too big... because I went to a really small grade school (K-12th grade) and I liked that personalize interest given by the teachers. I came to NYU because I wanted a bigger school and to take advantage of the diversity fo the student body, which I didn't get in high school, but for me the school is just too big.
I spend most of my time on campus because I live downtown and to get to and from school just takes too much time to do multiple times per day, usually. I also have a lot of extra-cirriculars, so I need to stay on campus to work on those after my classes are finished.
Even though NYU is in the middle of the city, I still feel like we have a little bit of a "college town" feel, ust because around campus most of the people you do see are students... and there are a lot of activities geared toward just students/the NYU community specifically.
There's not a lot of school pride. People who do go see games and such is usually because they know people on the teams, which is fine, but it's not my thing. Besides sports, I think there is some school pride, just because you tell other people, "I go to NYU." and they know the name and will probably be somewhat impressed...
The experiences I'll remember about NYU mainly concern my involvement in extracurricular activities.
The most frequent student complaints have to do with teachers who aren't interested in their teaching (but rather their research, considering this is a university) so they put none, or barely any effort into actually teaching their students. Also, advisers are a big complaint, as well, as I already demonstrated.
NYU Academic Life
No.
My favorite class so far was Drawing. It was a small class so we got individual attention, and I enjoy drawing. I'm also really enjoying Modern South Asian Literature because it's also a fairly small class and there's a lot of discussion and room for students to speak and I like the fact that there's not too much lecturing.
My Least favorite classes were Perception (in the psychology department) and Early Modern Architecture. The Perception teacher was unorganized, hard to understand, and just in general didn't teach well, and on Top of that he was a hard grader. The only person who knew what they were doing in that class was the TA and he's the only reason I passed. The early modern architecture teacher was a Terrible teacher. She was boring and didn't explain things well. She was way too old to be teaching, I don't even think she's teaching this semester or anymore after this last semester. She knew her subject but had no idea how to teach it. Any interest I had in the subject was sapped out of me through her teaching.
I do think NYU students have some intellectual conversations outside of class.
Students are definitely competitive, more so in some departments than others.
My department (Urban Design and Architecture- in the Art History Department) is really small and I don't really like it. The biggest pain is that we have a "Fine Arts Library" where you have to go and read some of the homework your teachers assign you, but you can't, check out the books, or photocopy pages and take them out, nothing like that. You have to sit there and read you homework. AND the hours are bad for it too, so if you have a heavy course load then it's really hard to get in there to actually do your homework. Also there's NO DESIGN really involved in my major...it's mostly architectural history...and I'm most interested in the design aspect... so it kind of sucks overall.
No, I don't spend time with professors outside of class.
NYU's academic requirements are okay, I think it's good to have people try out every field of interest. The only thng I don't like is the fact that we have to take 2 sciences.
The education is geared toward getting a job in some schools, but being a CAS student I don't think there's much help there unless you VERY actively seek out help at the career center. Learning for it's own sake doesn't happen unless you pursue your subjects like that.
NYU's Student Body
I've had good experiences with different racial, religious etc groups of people. The only thing is that people generally segregate themselves according to those automatically. I wanted to come to NYU so I could meet a lot of different groups of people... and yet I've fallen into a group of similar socio-economic, racial, and religious background as me.
Most students wear jeans or casual clothes to class, unless they have an interview or are goign to work afterwards. Or unless if they're in stern.
Most NYU students are from the tri-state area.
