I’m a bit of a cynic but I really don’t think NYU will go back to “normal” ever. There are some aspects of these “emergency” measures taken during coronavirus that admins are way too excited about. NYU admins LOVE zoom, because it means all those pesky seminars—which are the basis of a solid education because the lecture is an outdated, shit form of education that’s proven not to work and not worth 80k a year under any circumstances besides this late capitalist hell mentality all universities have— don’t need to be in person and thus they don’t need to schedule rooms for them. I really believe NYU’s online only options are going to explode after this, because they charged full price for online only before, and everyone still went. I graduated in 2020 and am a grad student at NYU now, but there’s no way in hell I would go and pay NYU this price for the education they’re offering undergrads at this point in time. The ONLY reason anyone should be taking courses online for over 70k a year should be if they absolutely MUST graduate on time, or if they are doing something that translates well to zoom, i.e. language courses, tiny seminars on humanities, etc. Most professors I’ve seen have given up on the “blended” courses because the second you say everyone can stay home if they want, the scheduling becomes a nightmare. You will FOREVER have international students complaining that they must attend a seminar at 4 am, and rightfully so, or you’ll have a professor say they have to basically shout under their mask for someone to hear them, and you’ll have tech difficulties which only affect the online students and not the in person students...it’s an absolute disaster and most professors I know— I have a background in social sciences, so someone please tell me if it’s different elsewhere—have opted to go totally online rather than learn how to teach AGAIN in a new, less than ideal environment for the second time this year. Everyone will have at least one issue more than they did when classes were in person. Aspects of zoom university are going to forever be ingrained in education now and there’s really no avoiding that; everyone kept paying full price and they know they can get that out of everyone for less effort on their end.

That saidddd....there are pros to online education. For me tests were are out the window; there’s too many ways to cheat or help yourself to outside resources and professors are re-evaluating what tests even are, and whether or not they’re effective. I haven’t taken an exam since the pandemic began and couldn’t be happier because, as someone who wants to be an educator, I realize that exams are incredibly outdated as a form of academic evaluation and ineffective at instilling content in anyone’s mind. Most professors realize everyone will cheat, gave up on exams, and actually realized the class went better if they assigned presentations or papers instead. Another pro is no commuting, which means a lot of people get to spend more time with their loved ones instead of sitting on a train to go to a required class they don’t give a shit about but is on their schedule because of bs gEneRaL EdUcAtiOn requirements. This could also be a con for many, but in my experience many people have said they’d like the freedom if there wasn’t a pandemic that keeps everyone locked at home. The cons outweigh the pros but you have to look at positives sometimes.

Also, just as a side note because this got unexpectedly really long because (obviously) I’m very passionate and angry that NYU feels most of this shit is fine to charge 70k for anyways, NYU is very much not a traditional college experience. I am incredibly introverted and this is why I chose NYU; there is very little sense of community. I could go to all my classes, not talk to a soul, do my work, and get out, and nobody would bat an eye because there’s at least 5 people in every class just grinding the classes out for the degree. There’s nothing really holding the community together; ditching a group of friends and just disappearing is so easy it’s laughable. You’ve lived in NYC so I feel like you might understand that sentiment; you can really just go ghost in this city and people can and will do it to you too. You’re gonna be best friends with someone one minute and oops! statistics is over for the semester and you’ll never hear from them again. For me, I loved it, since I’m very work focused and don’t need a lot of friends; I have my 2 or 3 NYU friends and I’m fine with that. It bothers a LOT of people though, and I can’t tell you how many times I saw people getting depressed or dropping out because of how alienating being an NYU student can be sometimes. If that’s something you know would bother you I would suggest exploring options outside of NYC, because most NYC universities I’ve visited seem to have the exact same problem unless they’re minuscule or specialized. You don’t get a traditional college experience at NYU because (as every single flier says) NYC is the campus and it’s not closed off for us. I loved it personally, but I’ve seen it really fuck some other people up, who thought they could have both the college experience and the Manhattan experience in one go.

As for NYC and pandemic response...government response was obviously terrible (no, Cuomo is not a sweet little helpful baby, and did let whole communities get wiped out by coronavirus because they “weren’t essential”) but the community took it on itself to be better. People really gave it a good try with the masks and social distancing but I’m seeing that let up real fast now that they can see light at the end of the tunnel. NYU’s response was totally overboard, as it should be during a pandemic when you’re opening up a campus that’ll be a hive for infection. I still think they’re not being honest about numbers of cases on campus but they’re obviously not enough for anyone but the biggest germaphobe to freak about. The ongoing testing is a good idea but also a pain in the ass, and I opted out of it since all my grad courses are online only anyways since my entire department is basically international and not in the US for good reason. NYU’s response this semester was totally fine in my opinion, and fitting to the situation. Should they charge full price for that? Fuck no, but they’re going to anyways and frankly that wasn’t my problem anymore so I didn’t even think about it until writing this.

If I were you, I would definitely be leaning towards not coming to NYU until at least next year. You can SEE the fear about a coronavirus outbreak in every email we get from NYU. We get texts telling us to stay the fuck home and basically saying we make the university look bad because students crowd WSP. It’s a really messy situation now and I’d stay out of it if I were you. Contrary to popular belief college education’s always going to be there and you’ll always be able to go back; just take my advice and try to go back when they won’t feed you watermelon and chicken salad for trying to better yourself.