By Elizabeth LaScala, PhD
Pace University is the only private university in the New York Metro Area that lets students live in Manhattan or live nearby and come into the Big Apple as needed for classes or other activities.. Pace’s Lower Manhattan campus is located close to Wall Street and City Hall, and within walking distance of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s also within easy walking distance of Fulton Center, one of the busiest subway stations in the city. The Pleasantville campus, located in Westchester County, is just over an hour from Grand Central Station by Metro North train. Pace students in Westchester can work in the city and also take classes in Lower Manhattan when convenient.
Over 5,500 undergrads study in Lower Manhattan—forty percent live in university owned housing within a five-block walk. Next fall Pace will complete renovations on a 480-bed residence hall for first-year students. Just under 2,500 undergrads go to Pleasantville—sixty percent of them live on a campus in a more suburban setting. About 30 percent of the students at Westchester are varsity athletes who compete in 14 scholarship sports, including football. Athletics at Pace are at the NCAA Division 2 level; scholarships are a combination of athletic awards with merit and/or need-based aid.
Founded in 1906 as a business college in Lower Manhattan, Pace’s undergraduate schools include the Dyson College of Arts & Sciences, College of Health Professions, Lubin School of Business, Sands College of Performing Arts, School of Education and the Seidenburg School of Computing & Information Sciences. There is considerable overlap among the academic offerings on both campuses. However, if you want to study nursing or writing, you must pursue your education in Westchester. The same is true if you’re an athlete. Interested in the visual or performing arts? Then you must pursue your degree in Manhattan.
Pace has interesting strengths. It is one of the most represented schools on the Broadway stage according to Billboard magazine. The Dance program was rated as one of the nation’s best by DanceUS.org. The Lubin School of Business has one of the few programs that is dually accredited in Business and Accounting by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Only two percent of all AACSB accredited schools are dually accredited. Lubin students can also receive grants to attend professional conferences, attain career-related certifications and even study abroad. Pace’s nursing program, the university’s only major that requires direct admission for freshmen, places students into clinical rotations starting in the sophomore year. Pace also offers cutting edge instruction and research in artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity and machine learning. A new lab located in Lower Manhattan that opens later this year will be dedicated to AI research and studies.
Pace places a huge emphasis on career development, getting students into internships and other hands-on, real-world learning experiences as early as possible. In addition to the career-related programs managed by the individual schools, the university runs two career development programs for all majors, one for domestic students, the other for international students. Students who complete these programs may also apply for a funded summer internship experience with non-profit organizations in the New York area.
Pace University has become one of the more aggressive schools in the country when it comes meeting the students “where they’re at” in terms of the careers they want to pursue in a city where they want to pursue them.
Public: 8,223 undergraduates, 5,386 graduate students
83% acceptance rate
mid-SAT: RW 580-670, M 540-630; mid ACT: 24-29
6% International
44% Diversity
50% Out of State
Student-Faculty: 14 to 1
Image Credit
Title: Kessel Student Center
Author: Acressotti
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kessel_Student_Center.jpg
