Meet NYU Stern’s MBA Class Of 2022

Another big difference in 2020: the percentage of women increased from 37% to 43% of the class. While COVID risks deterred many international students from entering the United States, NYU Stern saw little change in its international student population. This percentage dropped just one point to 32%, though the number of countries that first-years hail from dipped from 37 to 30 this year. By the same token, minority students account for 32% of the class, with underrepresented minorities making up 12% In addition, military veterans comprise 4% of the class, with students ranging in age from 22 to 40.

Academically, the class is pretty evenly divided between business, hard sciences, and liberal arts majors as undergrads. The largest segment – Business – composes 29% of the class. The next largest blocs include STEM majors (23%), Social Sciences (20%), Humanities and the Arts (14%), and Economics (14%).

Like many MBA programs, Financial Services produced the highest number of Stern MBAs at 27%. The class also includes first-years from Consulting (10%), Technology (8%), Non-profits and Education (8%), consumer Products and Retail (7%), and Entertainment and Media (7%).

RANKS SECOND FOR FIRST-YEAR PAY

NYU Stern certainly had momentum coming into 2020. For one, the Class of 2019 had averaged $168.291 in average pay and bonus, second only to the Wharton School among American full-time programs. This year, NYU Stern grads should again rank among the best. Average pay, for one, rose from $135,299 to $143,858. This news is tempered by average bonus, which slid by nearly $400 to $37,892. Even more, the percentage of job offers made within 3 months of graduation fell by three points to 92% for the Class of 2020 (with the percentage of job offers accepted also dropping by three points to 89%).

NYU Stern enjoys one distinct advantage: size. Combined, its undergraduate and  graduate student population swells to over 5,400 students – with just 8% being full-time MBA students. Employing over 430 faculty members, Stern ranks just below the Wharton School for faculty research, ensuring MBAs are exposed to cutting edge business models and practices. Scale also enables the school to offer over 200 electives and 50 clubs to MBAs. On top of that, Stern maintains 28 specializations, including Luxury Marketing, FinTech, Real Estate, Sustainable Business, Tech Product Development, and Entertainment and Media.

Size also translates to alumni expertise at Stern. Able to pull faculty from the undergrad, executive, and part-time pools, the full-time program ranks among the top schools in seven specializations according to deans and MBA directors surveyed by U.S. News. They include: Marketing, Global Business, Real Estate, Accounting, Finance, Information Systems, and Business Analytics. In terms of support, Stern boasts over 110,000 alumni in nearly 140 countries.

“At NYU Stern we call this our “size paradox,” explains JP Eggers, Vice Dean for MBA Programs, in a 2019 interview with Poets&Quants. ”Stern has a larger faculty than most business schools with a broad range of expertise. Our size gives us the flexibility to be nimble, to anticipate ever-changing market needs and to be first and fast to market. For example, our size and strengths enabled us to be the first U.S. business school to introduce a Fintech specialization, to create a new category of focused MBA programs and to offer an MS in Management online.”

A Q&A WITH JP EGGERS

This year, P&Q held a similar Q&A with Eggers to learn about new developments in the program and the impact of COVID-19 on the MBA population. What can business students expect in the coming year? How has the new core curriculum been received by students? What are some expected benefits of the Stern MBA? Here are some thoughts shared by Eggers earlier this fall.

P&Q: What are the most exciting new developments at your program?

Eggers: “So many examples, as we continue to adapt to the changing world around us. For the Fall 2020 incoming class, we have launched a new co-curricular initiative called Change: Studio that builds an infrastructure within the MBA experience to develop each student’s capacity to impact and drive change. Students will choose from a menu of options across three pillars: Leadership Development, Experiential Learning, and Entrepreneurship. Each pillar consists of both substantial commitments (e.g., semester-long courses, multi-semester extracurricular activities) and shorter, immersive experiences ranging from boot camps on the Future of Work to case competitions. The goal is to help students become comfortable with the changing nature of business.

On a related note, earlier this year we announced the establishment of a new Leadership Accelerator that my colleague Nate Pettit is directing to immerse students in a sequence of experiential modules that trigger the need to act, and then reflect. A cornerstone of this initiative will be hands-on simulated experiences to accelerate students’ leadership development, including plans to build our own set of trademarked simulations in-house. The accelerator initially targets full-time MBA students (including many elements of Change:Studio), but will expand across populations in the future.

As you know, as of January 2020 Stern’s two-year Full-time MBA was officially designated as a STEM program, which not only covered all students who graduated this past May but also retroactively applied to May 2019 grads who were on OPT.  This was a significant milestone for our program and recognition of its rigor.  Our one-year Andre Koo Tech MBA is already a STEM-designated program.

Another milestone was achieved in Endless Frontier Labs (EFL), a program at Stern to accelerate early-stage science and technology-based startups sourced from around the world. EFL graduated its first startup cohort this past May and is recruiting for next year, focusing on both Life Sciences and Deep Tech as two distinct venture tracks. MBA students have the opportunity to take an affiliated course taught by my colleague and EFL Founding Director Deepak Hegde and consult with the ventures in a nine-month process designed to help them scale towards commercialization. In fact, one May 2020 MBA graduate who took the course accepted a full-time position in an Endless Frontier Labs biotech/AI startup as a result. Multiple students spent their summer internships with EFL companies.

Importantly, we have been working as a team that includes Senior Leadership, Student Government, and our student Diversity Committee to deliver the Intercultural Development Inventory assessment. This is designed for individuals to better understand their capacity to adapt to others with different social identities to all incoming MBA students over the summer as they prepare to begin their journey with us. In addition to taking the assessment, we have arranged for every incoming student to have a personal review session which includes a discussion of actionable steps they can take to increase their capacity to adapt that will serve them well in the years beyond business school.

P&Q: What are the two most unique or differentiating features of your full-time program? How do they enrich the MBA experience?

Eggers: “In a word: Change. What we tell students is that Stern is the place you come to learn to make change your ally.  Students who choose us seek a supportive, collaborative environment in which they can put their EQ to the test and cultivate resilience and the ability to be agile and nimble. Years ago, technology started to create disruption across industries and sectors, requiring business to adapt and innovate rapidly to the new world order both to survive and to thrive. Our corporate partners demand talent with these skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. Of course, we had no idea how prescient our call to action around embracing change would become as the world changed overnight in the face of a global public health pandemic. Through classes and real-world projects, students will leave Stern ready to lead and drive change.

While experiential learning exists across MBA programs, the nature of such experiences through our Stern Solutions experiential learning courses and projects continues to be a hallmark of the Stern MBA experience. One year-long course is the NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF), a joint partnership with Stern, NYU Wagner, and NYU Law.  This past spring students in the fund made a $25,000 investment in a company that engages elementary school-aged students in STEM, particularly girls. Having recently received a $100,000 commitment, NIIF will continue in the next academic years with an emphasis on identifying enterprises focused on resilience and racial justice. All of our Stern Solutions courses have different areas of focus (e.g., we introduced a new one on FinTech last year), are led by Stern faculty, and build on the deep relationships that Stern has with the New York City business community.”

P&Q: How has COVID-19 impacted your business school?

Eggers: “As a School that believes in embracing and leading change, we walk the talk. When the pandemic hit, we innovated quickly in creating a brand new program called SternWorks, which had a few goals. First, we connected MBAs with vital small businesses in need of help to share their skills and give back to the NYC community, including through the New York City Department of Small Business Services. Simultaneously, through the engagement of our Board, alumni and administrators, we created summer internship opportunities for students who were seeking and projects for graduates whose start dates were delayed.

The fact that Stern has an online MS in Quantitative Management program allowed us to tap in-house expertise and best practices readily in the swift pivot to remote classes during the spring semester.

We’ve also created a number of faculty-led courses and learning opportunities to enrich the student experience. First, given the widespread impact on business, markets and financial systems, we created a new faculty virtual lecture series for students and alumni to gain insights in real time as the situation was unfolding. Nineteen of these events were held during a five-month period. Second, my colleague Professor Anat Lechner led a “Leading through Crisis” summer course for Langone Part-time MBA students with 13 other Stern faculty members, aimed at providing support and knowledge to help working professional students lead through difficult and uncertain times in their current roles. This course dealt both with the COVID-19 crisis and with the fundamental changes to business and society emerging from this year’s protests of racial injustice. This fall, we will offer a course on how the economic crisis created by COVID-19 is affecting the domestic and global financial system. The class is led by my colleague Viral Acharya, who recently returned to Stern after serving for two years as the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).”

To read about 11 students in the Class of 2022, go to Page 3.