The Leonard N Stern School of Business is part of New York University, a private university based in the city’s Borough of Manhattan.
It was founded in 1900 as the School of Commerce, Accounting and Finance, providing evening classes for workers on Wall Street and in 1916 became one of the founder members of the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). It became the Stern School in 1988 following the $30 million endowment by alumnus Leonard Stern which enabled the consolidation of previously scattered facilities on a single location on Washington Square in Greenwich Village. Students are known as Sternies.
The school, which in 2018 used the slogan "Be Possible" and advertised four of its core selling points – academic excellence, IQ and EQ, collaborative community and the energy of a global hub. It takes much of its character from the proximity of New York’s financial district.
Approximately three-quarters of students on the undergraduate bachelor in business science programme take the finance strand of the course of the 13 different options offered. In 2017 the university rejected eight applicants for every one that it accepted,The majority of MBAs go on to work in finance or consulting.
It has 10 academic departments in total. Its 15 research centres include the Urbanization Project founded by Paul Romer, who in 2018 became Stern’s third Nobel Prize winner in economics this century, and the Volatility Institute. Its international prestige is reflected in programmes like the Trium Global Executive MBA, run in collaboration with HEC Paris and London Business School.
