Academic Policy Board

The academic policies and procedures of the Leonard N. Stern School of Business were designed by the faculty and administrators to maintain the highest level of academic integrity within the Stern MBA program. Stern recognizes that, on occasion, you may have an extenuating or unusual circumstance that you feel may warrant an exception to one of the school's policies. In such situations, you may submit your request to the Academic Policy Board, a group of faculty deans and senior administrators who meet regularly to review and render decision on student requests.

You may submit an online petition to the Academic Policy Board Petition site for review. To submit a petition, please log in with your Stern NetID and password. 

Please be advised that board decisions are final and subsequent petitions to the same regard will not be reviewed unless new, compelling information is provided.
 

Grading Concerns

Grading and instructor issues are not within the purview of the Academic Policy Board.

If you have a concern with a particular course and/or a grade, your first step is to address this with the instructor of that course.  If the issue is not resolved, you may next raise the issue to the chairperson of the academic department.

Grade reviews can involve any aspect of the student's submitted work in the class.  Reviews may result in a higher grade, a lower grade or no changes made to the grade.

Specializations


Specializations are not within the purview of the Academic Policy Board.

Each Specialization is overseen by a committee of faculty members. Once a year, each committee reviews and updates the elective courses that count toward each specialization. While there may be many courses that are of interest to students pursuing each specialization, only those courses that are sufficiently focused on the theory, methods, and knowhow central to the specialization count toward the specialization.

Between yearly reviews, you may request to add a course to a specialization by sending a message to MBASpecRequest@stern.nyu.edu.

The message should include:

  • the course
  • the course syllabus
  • the specialization, and
  • the basis for requesting that the course count toward the specialization. 

The outcome of the request may be a decision that:

  • the course is of interest by not sufficiently focused, so it does not count, or 
  • the course is focused and does count, or 
  • the decision should be deferred to the annual review. 

Note: There are no approvals by exception. Courses are not reviewed and decisions are not rendered based on individual student circumstance. A course will only be added to a Specialization if it is determined to be an important addition for all students within the MBA program.