- My name is Jennifer.
I'm at NYU Stern Class of 2020.
I'm concentrating in Finance
with a minor in Studio Art.
Outside of school I really
love exploring New York.
There's always really exciting things on
from cool bands to restaurants
and bars to explore,
so I really never get bored.
(jazz music)
So this is my room, there's
not a whole lot to see
because no one has
particularly big or
cool rooms in New York.
But, pretty standard, I've
got a bed, some plants.
There's a lot of art around
because I really love art,
and I'm doing a studio art minor.
You can see a couple of pieces
that I've been working on this semester,
so I'm currently taking
a oil painting class,
and we're focusing on portraiture.
So those are two girls in
my class that I painted.
(bright music)
So, a typical Monday for me,
I wake up around 7:30 a.m.
I walk to the deli.
I usually grab a double
bacon egg sandwich,
and then I head to my art class
where we do oil painting
for about three hours,
maybe grab lunch with a couple of friends,
or at 3:30 I have a finance class
and then probably for
the rest of the evening
I would just be either
working or studying.
And I usually get to bed, it's pretty bad,
past one a.m. to be honest.
(light music)
This is one of my
favorite spots on campus.
Not many people know about it,
but once you go inside
and walk through this
little restaurant area,
there's actually this
beautiful green house
with a fountain and these
gigantic colorful lamps
that you can sit under.
So sometimes I'll just come here
and study by myself or with my friends
and eat the pizza which
is all cooked in house.
(light music)
Cool, so we're currently
in Washington Square Park.
This is really NYU student's
equivalent of a quad,
so people really just come out here
to hang out with their friends
and enjoy some of the music.
There's a lot of jazz band
pop-ups and artist pop-ups.
You get really famous artists.
You get incredibly talented,
like Julliard trained musicians.
It's kind of incredible, I
really love spending time here.
- This is so neat though.
It's like an amusement park.
- Yeah, it really is, it's
like endless entertainment.
Here we are at the Sterns
School of Business.
I'm about to walk into my favorite class,
called the International Studies Program.
What's really cool about this
particular program at Stern
is this really very
generous alumni family,
actually every single year they sponsor
all the juniors to fly
to a different country.
So this year, I got to choose between
Hong Kong, Lima, and Copenhagen,
and I chose Copenhagen.
And yeah, so basically
the alumni are paying
for my flights, for
nice hotels for a week,
and, yeah, I'm really excited.
I'm really looking forward to it,
so (points toward building).
(light music)
- Broadly speaking, what is
the curriculum like at Stern?
Like, what does everyone need to do
and then what is more specialized,
like you might choose to do?
- So, at Stern is a really large core,
and the idea of this is, as I mentioned,
just to provide a really strong foundation
for being able to go out
and either start a business
or thrive in a business space
and understand finance and economics
and statistics and how everything works.
- [Interviewer] Right
- So there is a really
large core curriculum,
but I think what's really interesting,
and maybe people don't always understand,
is there's also this sustainable
business slant on it.
- Cool, are there specific
tracts within finance
for somebody who wants to
go work in the hedge funds,
somebody who wants to
work in private equity
or in, I guess, asset management
or some other finance-related career?
- Yeah, so we have a
lot of specific classes
geared towards those different areas.
So actually one of the
most famous classes here
is with a professor who's kind
of well-known on Wall Street
as the King of Beta
or basically it's just
this kind of technical
concept for valuation.
So, everyone wants to take his class.
He's like kind of a superstar,
known all over Wall Street
and finance circles.
So, you really have access
to world-leading, industry-leading
talent and research.
- [Interviewer] So where are we now?
- We are currently in the
NYU Steinhardt Building.
NYU Steinhardt is the
School of Arts and Culture,
so there's a really wide range of things
that people do here, and
one of them is studio art.
So, there's a really
broad range of things that
that encompasses, so you can do anything
from what I'm doing, which is oil painting
to sculpture, photography,
even like pottery.
- [Interviewer] So, is it
common for students at Stern
to take classes outside of
Stern and to get minors,
or even I guess majors,
outside of the program?
- Yeah, it's really common,
and I think Stern does its
niche subjects really well,
but because people want to explore things
beyond business and finance
and a little bit of math and things.
People do get really excited
about doing things like art minors.
- [Interviewer] So you really have access
to all the NYU schools basically?
- Yeah, yeah, I think you still need
to apply and everything
individually and be accepted,
but yeah a lot of people are also doing
computer science or math at Courant.
- So what draws you to visual art?
- I think just the feeling of
when I'm creating something
that hasn't been created before,
and I know I can just
take it anywhere I want,
and also the feeling that I get
when I'm looking at something
that someone else has created
that's really amazing and awe-inspiring
or technically beautiful.
You know the technical skill
involved is really amazing.
Just really that feeling
brings me so much happiness,
and I've loved art since I was a kid,
so I feel like I'm kind
of living the dream.
(jazz music)
- So, what has the transition been like
from NYU's College of Arts
and Sciences to NYU's Stern?
- Yeah, I think there's two
really large differences,
well actually there's a number
of really large differences,
but I would say the two largest ones
are probably the type of people.
So at the College of Arts and Sciences,
there's a really wide range of people,
so you have people
from all sorts of different
ethnic backgrounds
and who plan to pursue a
lot of different interests,
but I think at Stern
there's a little bit less ethnic diversity
and people are generally quite
focused on one of two tracks.
So there's a lot of
people going into finance.
- [Interviewer] Okay
- About 75% of people
at Stern study finance,
and I wouldn't say tunnel vision,
but there's just a really large focus,
the entire school's really
geared towards finance.
- [Interviewer] I see.
- And, in the College
of Arts and Sciences,
I think people just think
a lot more holistically
about what they're interested in,
about what careers they want to pursue.
- [Interviewer] Mmhm, gotcha.
What would you say surprised
you the most about Stern?
- Honestly, I was a little
worried about going into Stern
because people like to portray
it as this hyper-competitive,
I don't want to say unfriendly atmosphere,
but yeah I hear a lot of
people describing Stern
with these negative terms.
And so going into it from
the outside I was like,
is this really a place I wanna be?
- Right
- But going in, it was
actually the opposite.
Yes there is a small minority of people
who are too competitive
and a little cutthroat,
but, as with any school,
you just avoid those people
and you just hang out with the nice ones.
- Yeah
- I'm originally from
Auckland, New Zealand,
and I love it there, but
it's very kind of small
versus coming to a
global hub like New York.
- [Interviewer] Right.
- Endless culture and endless fun.
Yeah absolutely, I would say do it.
(jazz music)
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it's just thats wright
which is thats underscore,
underscore, underscore
w-r-I-g-h-t.
(jazz music)
