Finding the Right 'Fit'

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• A Leap into Business School

Erin Rupprecht
NYU (Stern)
MBA Class of 2010

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We are all taking accounting, but there are separate sections for those who are in finance and those who are not, so that the accounting and finance syllabi complement each other and I learn the accounting most relevant to my interests.

curriculum overview

Next semester, my finance-oriented classmates will take corporate finance with one of Stern's most celebrated professors, Aswath Damodaran, while I take the foundations of finance core course. And that's fine, because I know I'll be able to take Damodaran my second year, since the class is generously sized in reflection of its popularity.

So that's just one example. To give a more general overview of the curriculum, at Stern, students take four required core courses—accounting, statistics, teams and leaders (noncredit), and professional responsibility—and a minimum of five of the seven "menu" core courses (leadership in organizations, foundations of finance, macroeconomics, marketing, microeconomics, operations, and strategy—these are my shorthand names for them, but visit Stern's academic advising Web site for more details).

In our first year, we take three of the required core courses—accounting, statistics, and teams and leaders—and between five and seven (our choice) of the menu core courses. The third required core course, professional responsibility, is taken second year. The ranges of experience students bring to Stern means it is possible to place out of core courses, as my CPA and former statistic-teaching-assistant friends have done.

As a career switcher, I plan to take all seven classes in the core. It's important to me to have that solid business education foundation, both for my internship next summer and moving forward in my career. At Stern, classes for the next semester are chosen through a lottery process, with second years receiving preference for a majority of the elective courses and first years receiving exclusive access to the core courses as well as preferred access to certain electives, like Professor Damodaran's corporate finance course. We recently submitted our lottery entries, so results aren't out yet, but second years report that students typically receive their preferred courses.

Before I close, I just wanted to revisit my cross-pollination comment from earlier. A key element of the learning environment at Stern is working in teams. Stern assigned all of us to teams of six people, and I couldn't be happier with my group. We're from all sorts of backgrounds—financial services, post-production in L.A., advertising, and government—and each of our skill sets complements the others'. Given Stern's high percentage of enrolled women (just over 40% in my class), each team has two to three women. While the workload of this semester has been intense, just as promised, being able to work with my formal team, as well as the informal teams that have sprung up around shared interests and friendships, has made the rigorous schedule extremely rewarding. I look forward to the challenges of next semester.

Erin Rupprecht is a member of the NYU Stern full-time MBA class of 2010.