Meet NYU Stern’s MBA Class Of 2024

CLASSES WITH EXECUTIVE CELEBS

What differentiates NYU Stern’s MBA program from many others. Start with scale. As a whole, the school is home to over 5,000 undergraduate and graduate business students. This makes it one of the world’s largest business programs – with graduates able to tap into alumni network in nearly ever company, industry, and region. That doesn’t count a portfolio of over 200 electives and 50 student organization. Plus, students can choose from 27 different specializations, including Entertainment and Media, FinTech, Healthcare, Luxury Marketing, Sustainable Business and Innovation, and Tech Product Marketing. Translation: There is something for every student at Stern – and an expert in the field to teach it too. After all, the school employs over 400 full-time faculty, not counting visiting and adjunct professors. With its New York City locale, Stern can draw on a wealth of talent to teach classes. For example, Bob Tuschman teaches MBA-level courses for Television Management and Entertainment and Media Industries. His claim to fame? He is the General Manager of The Food Network, where he helped sign and develop iconic personalities like Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri.

What’s more, MBAs can take courses for credit outside the business school. Phan Hoang (’22), for example, completed several bankruptcy courses at the NYU Law School to deepen his background in finance. Back at Stern, Hoang studied volatility under Robert Engels, a Nobel Laureate. All the while, he was able to participate in the Stern Consulting Corps, where he gained real client experience in areas like digital technology.

“I got to see the internal and external data, do extensive market research, and come up with viable solutions,” he wrote in a P&Q column. “This was one of the hardest tasks I’ve ever done because I was so out of my element and felt lost. Thankfully, I had a very strong and supportive consulting team led by professors who were former MBB consultants. I gained a lot of knowledge and experience from this, especially learning how to communicate with clients, deciding where and when to push back when requests are out of scope, and applying strategic frameworks to my thinking and approaches. These were incredibly useful skills.”

FROM SOCIAL JUSTICE TO REAL ESTATE

The Stern Consulting Corps is just one of the popular programming choices at Stern. For nearly a decade, the school has maintained a Center for Business and Human Rights. Founded by Mike Posner, the center features 8 full-time members who conduct research and build coursework that spans from worker safety to boosting minority representation in senior management. Along the way, the center looks for ways to center organizations around a long-term vision that balances the equitable with the profitable.

“There are two aspects to what we do,” Posner told P&Q last year.” We are, in the first instance, radiologists. We do X-rays of industries, evaluate the challenges and look at how it relates to business models. We’re much more interested in how companies make money as opposed to how they give it away. In the second instance, we’re not just diagnosing the problem, we’re making recommendations to address it and then trying to work with companies to do that.”

The school has also been building on its strengths. This fall, Charles C.Y. Chen donated $20 million dollars for Stern to open the Chao-Hon Chen Institute for Global Real Estate Finance. Already featuring one of the top real estate specializations, the institute will support research on disruptive practices in the field, along with areas like climate change and emerging markets around the globe.

“From climate change and sustainability to proptech and the globalization of real estate finance, the industry and our role in the built environment is being redefined,” says Sam Chandan, the institute’s new director in a September interview with P&Q. “Charles’ transformative gift empowers Stern to tackle some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities confronting the industry and to lead the dialogue in the global real estate and policy communities.

HIGH SATISFACTION WITH THE PROGRAM

Maybe the biggest news hit the streets last November, when Stern added an online component to its part-time MBA program. Launched this fall, working professionals can now take core courses online and complete electives on campus. Hence, they can tap into a wide array of choices to better personalize their classes to their interests. Call it a blending, with the school also adding 10-15 online electives and projecting that students will migrate online for 60%-75% of their courses.

“We specifically designed this option to combine the added convenience and flexibility of some online courses with the ability to easily access NYC for in-person courses,” explains JP Eggers, Vice Dean of the MBA program  in a 2021 P&Q interview. “We have intentionally set up the option to be a hybrid of online and in-person because we believe that coming to New York City and taking some of the classes on campus is an integral component of the NYU Stern MBA experience.”

In the end, scale delivers flexibility and opportunity…and higher student satisfaction too. In last fall’s Princeton Review survey, NYU Stern produced average scores that ranked among the Top 10 for Classroom Experience, Teaching Excellence, Administration, and Resources For Women. On top of that, MBA survey-takers gave Stern the highest score for its Finance curriculum – and its 2nd-best score for Consulting. Among the students and alumni who completed the 2022 Economist survey, Stern ranked 5th for Programme Content and 1st for its “Range of and Access to Overseas Study Programmes.”

And Stern isn’t just scoring big in the student section, When U.S. News surveyed business school deans and MBA directors about Stern’s programming,  the school achieved Top 5 scores in Finance, Real Estate, International Business, Analytics, and Information Systems. This year, Stern also finished 2nd to Wharton for the volume and quality of its faculty research, according to UT-Dallas’ North American research ranking. When it comes to starting pay, Stern grads traditionally pull down some of the highest basses and bonuses. Look no further than the Class of 2021’s $175,157 starting pay packages, which topped their counterparts at Harvard Business School and Stanford GSB. This is hardly a surprise considering Stern is the second-largest MBA feeder school to investment banking.

EQ IS THE DIFFERENCE

Such numbers may lead some to assume that Stern is just another sharp-elbowed urban business school. In reality, Stern weeds those candidates out early in the application. That’s because the program carefully screens for EQ: listening, empathy, teamwork and respectful communication.  That cultural foundation was a big draw for the Class of 2024. Cesar Cepeda, for one, likens EQ to being an Aircraft Commander.

“You have to keep ice in your veins no matter what is going on around you.” EQ is being able to have the self-control to be that steady figure in and out of the office. The more you can set a tone of calm, deliberate proactivity over rushed, haphazard reactivity – especially as you become progressively more senior in leadership.”

For Albert Williams Jr., EQ is a “universal language” – a set of cues that enable people to come together. Mariam Doudi has even created an EQ checklist of sorts to guide her in interacting effectively with others. “To me, EQ is about how you carry yourself,” she tells P&Q. “Are you self-aware? Can you be compassionate, patient, or empathetic? Do people gravitate towards you? It really is all encompassing. I’ve seen that having a higher EQ really helps get work done more efficiently. When I’ve made time to build a relationship with an operation partner, I have driven better and faster results as we worked together to solve problems.”

Q&A WITH JP EGGERS

What does Stern admissions look for in terms of EQ? That’s one of the questions answered by Vice Dean JP Eggers. In an exclusive Q&A with P&Q, he shares the latest developments at Stern along with what MBAs can expect in coming years.

P&Q: What are the two most exciting developments at your program in the past year and how will they enrich the MBA experience for current and future MBAs?

Eggers: “We are in the business of creating the conditions for a transformative MBA experience at NYU Stern. MBA students choose us, in part, because we promise to be the place where they learn how to make “change” their ally. Stern is a pivotal point in their journey to becoming inclusive leaders who build trust and inspire action using EQ.

One way we help them develop and hone these skills is through our Leadership Accelerator. For the first time this fall, one of its initiatives, the Makhoul Family Leadership Fellows Program, will be offered as a for-credit course because we believe this is so important. Through this course, students will enhance their self-awareness, practice difficult leadership scenarios with professional role players, participate in group challenges, and receive individual mentorship. About 60 students enroll each year. My colleague and Director of the Leadership Accelerator, Professor Nate Pettit, underscores that this is an intensely experiential approach to leadership development through a continuous cycle of high-engagement experiences coupled with deep reflection.

Regardless of whether a student elects this class, every MBA student gets immersed in building their cultural intelligence through Inclusive Leadership, an all-day workshop that builds on foundational elements introduced during MBA LAUNCH (orientation) which is held in late August. This year, the newly-updated two-part module at LAUNCH is called “The Sternies We Mean To Be”. Led by my colleague Professor Dolly Chugh, it will explore inclusion, diversity, belonging, equity, and access (IDBEA) at Stern. From their first days on campus, students will gain exposure to foundational concepts and research surrounding IDBEA, their relationship to business, and how they relate to Stern’s values and culture, including hands-on work. Our expectation is that they will begin the academic year being able to articulate a business case for growing their own IDBEA skills and understanding how diversity is essential for better decision-making, improved creativity and innovation, and productive collaboration.”

P&Q: If you were giving a campus tour, what is the first place you’d take an MBA applicant? Why is that so important to the MBA experience?

Eggers: “NYU Stern’s Gould Plaza and its entryway into NYU Stern.

Gould Plazais right outside the entryway to the main graduate-level building, the Henry Kaufman Management Center. It is a vibrant convening place where people and possibilities cross paths hundreds of times a day! In fact, this Plaza signifies access and connection to New York City itself, which serves as our extended classroom for real-world learning as well as a thriving ecosystem for career development, culture, and more. Whether it’s CEOs coming in to teach, or students heading out to meet with recruiters or organizations on experiential projects, this Plaza is well traversed. We like to think that the revolving door in the entryway to our building symbolizes the transformative experience that awaits every MBA student. Plus, I happen to think that the outside of the entry looks like R2-D2 (for any Star Wars fans), which is cool!”

P&Q: What is the most innovative thing you have introduced into the MBA program in recent years? How has it been a game changer for your program?

Eggers: “Hands down, I’d say it’s our Endless Frontier Labs (EFL).

A few years ago, NYU Stern launched EFL to attract and support massively scalable tech and life science startups from around the world, to remove the barriers that entrepreneurs face while commercializing their ideas. EFL seeks novel scientific or tech innovations that represent a substantial departure from the state-of-the-art; the 9-month rigorous program helps founders transform technical solutions into societal impact.

A companion MBA course runs with it, taught by EFL Founding Director and NYU Stern Professor Deepak Hegde. To date, 160 MBA students have gone through the course. In year one, just 23 students enrolled in the class; now the EFL course is oversubscribed and admits only about 60 students each year through a competitive application process.

The EFL experience prepares MBA students for a post-MBA career at a massively scalable startup, a venture capital firm, or the innovation center in a large company. MBAs get a front-row seat consulting for some of the most promising cutting-edge scientific startups, many coming out of the labs at MIT, Stanford, and other top scientific research institutions around the world. Some have even taken up jobs at these startups after graduating. This is unusual because most traditional MBA programs prepare their students to take up jobs at more established corporations. Within five years of founding, EFL startups have gone on to raise over $1B in venture capital as of May 2022. And the EFL program already counts a Unicorn among its ranks.”

Next Page: Profiles of 10 Stern First-Year MBAs.