The New York University’s Stern School of Business ranked No. 5 in our 2025 ranking of the the U.S.’ best undergraduate business programs, up four places from 2024.
In our three methodological categories, Stern scored highest in Admission Standards coming it at 4th out of a total of 105 ranked programs. It had the second most selective program with an acceptance rate of 4.8% (compared to a 5.2% rate reported in 2024’s ranking.) Only University of Pennsylvania’s The Wharton School (4.5%) was more selective.
Stern also tied with Cornell University’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics in Management for having the highest average SAT score for the latest incoming class at 1540.
The B-school ranked fifth in Career Outcomes and 21st in Academic Experience (as measured by alumni responses to our ranking survey.)
A TRULY INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
All of this translates into what is probably one of the most international undergraduate business school experience currently offered in the U.S. That has also translated into very lofty employment outcomes.
Its internship rate of 96.9% for the Class of 2024 was 2.6 points higher than the previous class (94.3%). Their 2024 employment rate was also up: 95.38% for the Class of 2024 compared to 94.30% for the Class of 2023. The most recent graduates with full-time positions had an average salary just shy of $100K – $99,119, up from the average $92,066 reported by the previous class.
Students looking for a truly international experience in an urban setting with strong job outcomes should put New York’s Stern at the top of their list. Georgetown University’s McDonough School is probably the only other top program that compares.
Stern’s pioneering International Studies Program (ISP) now requires each of its nearly 600 juniors to embark on an international study trip as part of their capstone course. However, the school is taking the three most important aspects of ISP – the global experience, the capstone course, and community building – and reinventing them into three new innovations for the undergraduate program. The incoming class will have a new senior capstone course in which Stern students work with one of New York City’s iconic companies or organizations throughout the semester.
“You can think of it as consulting to that organization, but that organization could be in any number of industries,” says Robert Whitelaw, vice dean of Stern’s undergraduate college, in this 2022 interview.
“We also wanted to exploit all the locational advantages of New York: A ton of our alums are here, and we have this amazing network of organizations, companies, firms we can work with. We doubled-down on experiential.”
Beginning with the Class of 2027, every graduate will also have a global requirement to earn their degree. They will have three ways to do this:
- Study a semester away at one of NYU’s 14 global sites including NYU Paris, NYU Prague, NYU Buenos Aires, and others.
- Spend a semester at one of NYU’s 17 IBEX (International Business Exchange Program) partners including Bocconi University in Milan, PKU (Peking University) in Beijing, and many others.
- Take a Stern Around the World Course which will feature a travel immersion built into the curriculum.
“I’ll give you a couple of examples: We have a sustainability consulting course that has a trip to Costa Rica. In Ghana, we have a social entrepreneurship course which is taught during the spring semester and then, over spring break, the students go to Ghana. We have adopted a village there that we’ve been working with for more than a decade. For this course, students have actually helped them develop a business producing fabric, and they are actually now selling it to this little dressmaker in Brooklyn who has a store in DUMBO,” Whitelaw says.
“Those courses have already existed, but we’ve actually boosted that portfolio to six courses this year. They include trips to the Netherlands, Singapore, France, and actually domestic trips as well because we have a lot of international students. We’re going to build it even further next year.”
STERN’S FIVE PILLARS
Stern’s undergraduate experiences are based on the five broad pillars of academics, global, social impact, professional, and community. For academics, Stern has tried to make its undergraduate program liberal arts-focused, allowing up to 50% of coursework to be in the liberal arts. Combining that with Stern’s New York City location, it provides a unique academic experience for business students.
In terms of social impact, Stern has actually created a four-course social impact focus that is required of all undergraduate business majors. “No other school does Social Impact like Stern,” the school says. Highlighting the professional pillar is SternTalks, which are “TED-style” alumni presentations given to first-year students during the fall semester.
Alumni say:
“I was a Business and Political Economy major, which was uniquely structured to require three semesters abroad in London and Shanghai, followed by a senior capstone project on a subject of our choice. This program allowed me to receive a truly global education while fully immersing myself in some of the major financial hubs of the world. I never would have had this opportunity in another program or at another school, and I am exceedingly grateful to Stern for the priceless learning experiences I gained inside and outside the classroom.”
“Having a social entrepreneurship minor facilitated by a partnership between the school of business and social work, many of my courses were “incubator” inspired where students were encouraged to get first hand experience conducting marketing research and consumer insight testing. This nurtured both my people skills and analytical judgment.”
“Our global studies program taught us business culture in Asia and took the entire class to Hong Kong for a week to immerse in the local culture. I additionally took a semester abroad in Madrid and was an International student, to begin with. All of that together truly gave me a perspective on different cultures and countries and how they think and do business. This significantly increased by business empathy and the ability to work with others.”
“I had the opportunity to work with one professor for all four years that I was at Stern and she became a great mentor to me: showing me how the research process works and getting me engaged in research more broadly. This started because of Stern’s SPUR (Stern Program for Undergraduate Research), which helped me meet professors and helped start long-term relationships that I still have today.”
“I participated in the Stern Honors program which gave the highest academic performers in that class year the opportunity to write a detailed thesis alongside some of the most highly regarded professors in the school. It was important to me because the process stretched my mind in ways I had never experienced before.”
“I spent full semesters abroad in London and Shanghai my sophomore year, which were great learning and experiential opportunities. Coming from a rural US background, I traveled throughout Europe and picked up conversational Mandarin while in China. I was spending a third semester Junior spring in Washington DC (interrupted by COVID) but was interning for the Securities and Exchange Commission and taking classes geared to my interest in financial industry regulation.”
For an in-depth, exclusive interview with NYU Stern Dean of the Undergraduate College Geeta Menon, go here.
