Meet NYU Stern’s MBA Class Of 2025

AN ENTREPRENEURIAL MECCA

That’s especially true in business. Picture a city with every imaginable company and industry, complimented by experts in every discipline and function. Better still, all of this is within a 15-30 minute cab or subway ride away. Not surprisingly, this wealth of resources has produced a bustling entrepreneurial culture. According to Startup Genome, New York City ranks as the #2 startup Ecosystem, home to 25,000 tech-enabled startups and over 100 accelerators and incubators. That doesn’t count top VC firms like Insight Partners, Lux Capital and Union Square Ventures (with Sequoia Capital setting up an outpost in the city too). Hence, the city spun out 98 unicorns from 2020-2022, while attracting $22 billion dollars in early seed funding during the over period – courtesy of the heavy public and private sector investment.

Top talent, infrastructure, funding and support – New York City boasts every imaginable advantage (and all in a condensed and accessible space). For him, that just amplified the excellence of NYU Stern’s MBA program, says Reggie Greathouse, a 2023 P&Q MBA To Watch and NYU Stern grad.

“NYC is the center for innovation and entrepreneurship, providing students with access to a range of industry networks and opportunities to intern and work in some of the world’s leading organizations. This presents a unique opportunity for students to gain practical experience and learn from experts in the field. So far, I’ve been to Google, Uber, Palantir, LinkedIn, Deloitte, Pfizer, and MongoDB.”

While the Big Apple offers a variety of distractions, ’23 alum Jeetendra Khilnani notes that Stern is hardly a commuter school.  “I believe we have a tighter community at Stern because we choose to spend time together and do things we’re interested in both at the same time – not just because there’s nothing else to do. We are a strong, tight-knit community despite the million ways to spend our time in NYC, and the city helps us be stronger together and find our crew – be it Broadway fans or bikers, foodies or fitness enthusiasts.”

THE CLASS PROFILE

The Class of 2025 features 327 students, with the school receiving 3,075 applications during the 2022-2023 admissions cycle and ultimately accepting 31% of these candidates. On average, the class brings a 732 GMAT to the program, with 650 being the lowest score accepted in the class. The class also averaged 163 scores in both the Quant and Verbal portions of the GMAT (with 155 being the lowest scores in both portions). As a whole, 45% of the class took the GMAT, while 22% completed the GRE. Another 15% received waivers from both tests. In addition, first-year Sternies achieved a collective 3.61 undergraduate GPA (with 2.96 being the lowest average accepted).

Women account for 43% of the class, down slightly from last year’s 45% high. Another 48% of the class hails from outside the United States, up five points from the previous year. By the same token, there are 46 countries represented in the class, up five from the Class of 2024. In addition, military veterans and LGBTQ students each make up a 13% share of the class. As a whole, the class is 28 years old on average, with the youngest and oldest students being 21 and 37 respectively.

Academically, STEM and Business majors each constitute a 27% share of the class. The remainder of the class holds undergraduate degrees in the Social Sciences (19%), Economics (17%), and Humanities (10%). In terms of professional experience, Financial Services (26%) doubles Consulting (12%) and Technology (10%). The class also features sizable experience in Government and Military (8%), Entertainment and Media (6%), Healthcare (6%), Consumer Products (5%), and Real Estate (5%).

A PROGRAM RICH IN RESOURCES

While EQ+IQ defines the Stern philosophy, scale reflects its day-to-day. The school is home to over 5,800 business students, half of whom are pursuing graduate degrees. The school also employs 470 professors among its tenure, tenure-track, clinical, visiting and adjunct faculty. With its New York City digs, the school can attract top industry executives and functional experts as speakers and adjuncts. That doesn’t count renowned faculty members like Scott Galloway, Aswath Damodaran, and Glenn Okun. At the same time, students can choose from 200 electives and complete three specializations. In fact, Stern offers 27 specializations pbrts;;, including Entertainment and Media, FinTech, Luxury Marketing, Real Estate, and Tech Product Marketing. And students can take a quarter of their classes outside the business school too. When they graduate, Stern MBAs will join an alumni base that includes 111,000 members across 144 countries.

The scale translates to excellence across the board. NYU Stern features the #5 Executive MBA and #7 undergraduate business programs according to P&Q. According to the University of Texas-Dallas annual business research ranking, the school also ranks among the Top 10 business schools for academic research. Among students and alumni survey by The Princeton Review, NYU Stern notched the highest score of any full-time MBA program for its Finance programming in 2023 (and ranked 3rd for Consulting). When MBA directors and business school deans were surveyed by U.S. News & World Report last year, NYU Stern’s scores ranked among the three-best in five disciplines: International Business, Real Estate, Marketing, Accounting, and Finance.

Stern has already started out strong in 2023. In February, the school received the largest gift in its history – $53.6 million dollars. That’s on top of the school launching its first online/modular option for its Part-time MBA program last fall. What’s next for Stern? This summer, P&Q reached out to Vice Dean JP Eggers for answers. Here are his thoughts on the state of Stern.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE VICE DEAN, JP EGGERS

P&Q: What have been the two most important developments in your MBA program over the past year? What type of impact will they have on current and future MBAs?

Eggers: “The strengths of NYU Stern are built off its deep ties to the business community in New York City. While that often means finance and technology, it also includes domains like real estate. In fact, we kicked off the last academic year with a $20 million gift from alumnus Charles C.Y. Chen to establish the Chao-Hon Chen Institute for Global Real Estate Finance at Stern, the largest gift for an Institute at the School to date.

Led by Director and Professor Sam Chandan, the Institute includes three new, interdisciplinary initiatives in areas that are disrupting real estate on a global scale: Proptech, Climate Change, and New and Emerging Real Estate Markets, building on the existing foundational pillar, the Center for Real Estate Finance. For MBA students, this not only means access to cutting-edge research, but also new global immersive learning experiences. In January, for example, a group of MBAs traveled to the UK to study the institutional real estate sector through an international lens in the inaugural “Global Real Estate Immersion: London” experiential course. The second immersion course took place in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in May, and expansion plans will take students further into Asia, Europe, and South America in 2024. These new courses are supported by a gift from Stern alumnus and Executive Board Member Franck Ruimy. Many Stern MBA students choose to specialize in Real Estate, one of more than 25 specializations available.

Next, while it’s perhaps more typical to see professors conducting research independently or with a few colleagues in their respective academic discipline, at Stern we’re especially proud of our legacy of faculty collaboration on the most timely and relevant breaking issues in business. In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, more than 30 Stern professors across departments contributed to the publication of three books on how to restore the global financial system. So it’s no surprise that this past spring, when Silicon Valley Bank failed causing rippling effects in the financial system, that a group of Stern economics, accounting, and finance faculty partnered up again to share analyses and proposals with students and alumni. This July they released a new book SVB and Beyond: The Banking Stress of 2023. This coming year, the efforts to create this book will give students opportunities to engage with their expert faculty through speaking events and classes on banking stress. Students consistently get a front-row seat in the classroom with professors who are on the pulse of change, influencing how finance will be conducted in the future.”

P&Q: Give us your one-minute pitch for your business school. What makes you unique?

Eggers: “When it comes to leading change, NYU Stern is a pioneer. We are bold and nimble; we prioritize excellence, but we’re unbound by tradition. The evidence? [We have] a history of success at being first and fast to market with new models of education in format; specialty and geography that set new norms, such as introducing a new category of specialized MBA degrees with our one-year Andre Koo Technology and Entrepreneurship, and Fashion and Luxury MBA Programs; and more recently, adding a new hybrid Online/Modular Option to our Part-time MBA.

We are deeply connected to industry, with our NYC location being an unmatched asset – whether that comes in the form of Stern Solutions experiential learning projects with leading brands and startups or bringing industry executives into our classrooms for practical learning. And of course, it means we have deep and diverse relationships with recruiters in every sector, along with an engaged alumni presence in New York and around the world. Last point – we are serious about having a culture shaped by EQ. Support for one another in every way is part of our DNA.”

P&Q: Sustainability has emerged as a major attraction to prospective MBA students. How does your full-time MBA program integrate sustainability across its curriculum?

Eggers: “One of our most popular centers at Stern is the Center for Sustainable Business (CSB) led by my colleague, Founding Director and Professor Tensie Whelan. Not only is CSB at the forefront of research in areas such as ESG, for example, but it’s deeply engaged in the student experience. MBA students can specialize in Sustainable Business and Innovation and choose from more than 25 classes in this arena, including real-world experiential learning courses.

One particularly innovative offering, the NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF), is a joint venture developed by faculty and students at NYU Stern, Wagner, and Law to immerse students in the process of impact investing. This spring, the students successfully completed NIIF’s fourth investment, with a $30,000 investment in EdVisorly, a Black- and female-founded business that has developed a community college-to-university platform. To date, NIIF has made $110,000 in investments.”

Next Page: In-depth Profiles of 10 First-Year MBA Students

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