Stern undergrads. Photo courtesy of NYU Stern School of Business
What is the demand for Stern right now, and how competitive is it to get in?
Oh my gosh, it’s really competitive. We have had a huge spike in applications over the years and during the time I’ve been dean, we’ve seen the numbers just go up. It’s always been going up, but the last four years in particular, have been crazy. When I started in the dean’s office in 2011, we had about 7,000 applications for about 600 spots. Today, we have about 11,000 applications and we’ve increased it by about 20 students, so about 620 spots, but it’s disproportionate. Just in the last year it was a 17% increase in applications.
I’m an academician who likes to look at the data in more detail, so I have done a deep dive into this data and one of the interesting things is that the percentage of early decision applicants has also gone up, which shows that Stern has also become a priority school to people and they’re willing to commit much earlier.
Also, our admissions process is pretty holistic. So it’s hard to say, ‘this is the SAT score that gets you in or high school GPA.’ It’s really a holistic view of SAT, GPA, leadership activity, and the courses the students take. So it’s more than GPA; it’s if they took the tough classes in high school.
Can you give more detail on what type of students are enrolling?
Looking at data, we have a fair level of granularity. If you think of getting 11,000 applications and the final 620 that we’ve chosen, their average SAT is around the 98th percentile, which is pretty awesome. It’s 1,451 for the entering class as the mean. They are 26% international. 41% female and that’s something we keep track of because we are cognizant of the fact that, as a business school, we tend to attract fewer females than males. The rest of NYU is 60% female and 40% male, but at Stern, it’s 40-60, and that’s been the trend—it varies between 36% and 42%. And we have about 16% underrepresented minorities in the entering class.
The students really have a diversity of interest and a diversity of backgrounds. And it’s refreshing to see one of the big themes when they come into school is to keep an open mind and explore. My advice is to try to take courses that are outside your comfort zone, which you might find intriguing. And that message for a 17- or 18-year-old is very important because they’re so quickly influenced by their peers that you want them to breathe on their own.
What areas in business do you see trending in popularity over the next few years?
Given the generation and the ‘startup’ buzzword, I think entrepreneurship is a big deal and it will continue to be a big deal in years to come. I think the notion that businesses have an effect on society and society has an effect on business and the whole idea of social impact and doing good is another area that people are becoming more sensitive about and students are getting more interested in.
And again, coming back to Stern and NYU and our location, it’s interesting to see that entertainment media and technology has become the number one cross-school minor at NYU. It’s really amazing to see how the location, as well as the talent of the professors involved, can really spur interest in an area like that. Entertainment media and technology, I think, is going to continue to grow in popularity too.
I’m a marketing professor and sensitive to the needs of the marketing community and I think luxury marketing, in particular, is an area that also is worth addressing. When I was department chair, there were a few students who said it’s really important to have it on the MBA side and it became a really popular area for students to both go into and get jobs in. So we’re going to try to do something along those lines at the undergrad level because there is enough interest and the location is great.
What advice would you give to high school students and their parents looking to get into a good business program?
I have a son who came to NYU, so it’s kind of interesting because I went through some of this process with him. I think that one of the big takeaways is that every student finds a good home and I don’t think parents necessarily believe that as they are going through the process and the students don’t always either. It’s easy to say in hindsight, but I think our admissions process is so holistic.
So my advice is to continue to challenge yourself. This notion of taking easy classes reflects in your transcripts. So take classes that are challenging and take part in extracurricular activities. It’s really important to know, at the end of the day, that we’re looking for people who are also team players and communicative.
I find that the students who graduate from Stern who are the happiest are the ones who really helped build the institution. And I just met with a bunch of freshmen this morning and that was one of the messages I gave. Leave the place better than you found it. While the intellectual component is really important, it’s also important to show that you’re a good citizen, a good leader, and you’re a good team player. Once they get here, they’re working in groups a lot.
And there has to be an internal thermometer that tells you if you’re a city kid or not, because this is an urban campus. At the end of the day, you are on an urban campus without gates. You have to embrace that, but it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s New York City. It’s safe and it’s beautiful but it’s still a city. And that’s what attracted me to this place and that’s what attracted a whole bunch of students to this place, but it’s not for everyone.
So specific to Stern undergrads, it’s important to have a well-rounded portfolio and love for being in the city.
If you could make any change in undergraduate business education, what would it be?
Personally, one of the first things I did as dean was to review the curriculum of all these other schools, because I had to educate myself to see what does an 18-year-old want and what are schools doing to address that? And one of the reasons I even considered the deanship was because I felt we were doing so many things really well.
So, from a personal point of view, I do think that business skills are really important. But in terms of what we should be paying more attention to, and what I believe Stern does well, it is social impact—trying to figure out how to make the world a better place. Money is important but doing good is extremely important. And so that would definitely be something that I’d like to see reflected more broadly because I think it’s a core part of building future business leaders and good policy makers.
The core principles of business will remain popular and need to remain popular—finance, marketing, etc.—but I would also like to see the infusion of social impact and doing good.
DEAN’S Q&A SERIES:
Charles Whiteman of Penn State
Roy “Chip” Wiggins of Bentley University
Carl Zeithaml Of University of Virginia
Dale Nees of Notre Dame University
Steven Malter of Washington University
Lawrence Murray of the University of North Carolina
David Platt of University of Texas
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