Recognized as "Best in Class" for Experiential Learning
New York City—it’s our home, it’s in our DNA, it’s our laboratory for learning. Most importantly, being in the heart of New York City enables Stern students to work directly with leading companies on real-world business challenges for their experiential learning projects. Stern’s NYC location also means that alumni can easily get involved with nearly 50 Stern alumni sponsoring projects each year. Stern’s reputation for one of the best schools for real-world learning is not going unnoticed. This year Poets&Quants awarded Stern its “Best in Class for Experiential Learning” distinction in 2025.
Read on to hear from students about their “Only at Stern” experiential learning projects.
Manhattan Chamber of Commerce/FIFA World Cup (UC)
Student: Stephanie Su, BS ’26
Project Goal:
“Our client in the NYC Consulting Capstone, the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, tasked us with strategizing how to attract tourists to small and medium-sized businesses in NYC during FIFA 2026.”
Key Learning Moment:
“The class required immense teamwork among the groups, which were each assigned a borough, and between groups as well. This meant all of us needed to communicate effectively and respond promptly. I applied key communication and teamwork skills I learned from Organizational Communications, which is a class where students form a group and present together for the entirety of a semester. Outside of communication, we each had to problem-solve using the resources at our disposal, something we have been practicing throughout our four years at Stern.”
NBC Universal (MBA)
Student: Khushali Dave, MBA ’26 (Andre Koo Technology and Entrepreneurship MBA)
Project Goal:
“Our client, NBC Universal, asked us to build an AI agent that helps guests select the best park experience package.”
Key Learning Moment:
“One of the exciting parts of this project was the ‘sticky problem’ of actively trying to bring AI into a physical, high-emotion consumer environment. While our brief was more broadly to develop a competitive AI solution for NBCU, our team had to do the deep thinking to truly question where in the process agentic AI made sense versus followed hype. It was a great exercise in both a product mindset—learning to solve for the right problem—and technical learning.”
What the Alumni Sponsor Said:
"Overall, the students were extremely thoughtful and resourceful. They built an end-to-end prototype with very limited resources, starting from research and ideation all the way to a functional product. The final prototype included some impressive features, such as an AI bot making calls. Beyond the technical execution, they also demonstrated strong product management skills. They were able to clearly define the problem, work backwards from it, and design a solution for a highly ambiguous challenge, which was particularly impressive."
— Shilpi Gupta, MBA ’19, (Andre Koo Technology and Entrepreneurship MBA), VP, Product, AI Solutions, NBC Universal.
