During my original visit to the lower part of Kips Bay, I did not think much of the neighborhood because I was way too focused on not getting lost. After several visits (resulting in more directional security), I noticed a couple of characteristic things about lower Kips Bay:

• It is far from the tourist areas of New York City.
• There are a lot of colleges here (School Of Visual Arts, CUNY Hunter College Brookdale Campus, NYU College of Dentistry, CUNY Baruch College).
• Due to the amount of colleges here, the population within the area appears to be mainly students.
• You can’t walk more than a block on a nice day without seeing a dog.

Of those observations, we were particularly interested in the amount of educational institutions and resources surrounding the area. When I, along with my group, traveled to Kips Bay with the clear objective of researching the area, we observed a wide selection of Midtown Manhattan’s colleges as well as the Epiphany Library branch of the New York Public Library system, and an international K-12 school, among other institutions. This presents a clear question: “Why come to Manhattan to further your education?”
As Christopher C., a Staten Island native who decided to attend Hunter College, said in our interview: “Why would I leave THE city for another city that just WANTS to be THE city? If I wanted a completely different environment, then sure, maybe, but why would I go to a place like Indianapolis? People come to New York City because NYC is where it’s at. I mean, maybe I’d go to Chicago or the West Coast. But I wouldn’t go to Philly if I live in NYC. It’s a downgrade. I’d pay more money for a worse school in a downgraded environment.” Many New Yorkers, like Christopher, are opposed to leaving, especially when it means moving to another city. Chasity Moreno, a librarian at the Epiphany Library, introduces a reason people might come/stay in New York that varies a bit from Christopher’s: “we have a lot of librarians from other places like the Midwest or California and I’m always interested why they move here. I think people are drawn to NYC because they say it’s a melting pot. It technically isn’t, per say, because people are cut off by neighborhoods and economics and all that. But I think the difference here is that that people meld in with each other a lot so you’re always around different kinds of people. A lot of people come here for that. And I think that people come here because everything is available to you here, culturally wise.”

New York City is home to many cultural institutions and monuments, many of which are free and are readily available to New Yorkers, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (pay as you wish), the Guggenheim ($25 for adults), the Museum of Modern Art (free on Fridays), The Statue of Liberty (varies), Ellis Island (varies), et cetera. New York City is always looked at as a beacon of opportunity. For a Baruch college student we interviewed, New York City is “kind of the center of it all, so you have access to it all.” This Baruch college student, a Bangladeshi native, finds that New York is a “location that exposes me to the environment I want to work in.” Corey A., a film student from the School of Visual Arts (SVA), said “being from Staten Island, Manhattan was the most practical place to pursue an artistic career with like-minded people.”
The numbers match up with our interviewee’s enthusiasm about education in New York. Within Kips Bay, SVA, NYU, CUNY Baruch and CUNY Hunter are all represented and all of these universities are high ranked.

• SVA was ranked #5 in PayScale’s “2013-2014 Top Art & Design Schools by Salary Potential.”

• SVA also ranks #2 in LinkedIn’s “Best Schools for Designers” list. U.S. News & World Report ranked SVA as the #18 among top art graduate schools for its MFAs in various fine arts fields.

• NYU, which is represented in lower Kips Bay by its school of Dentistry, ranks in the top 50 of several lists for top universities in both national and global terms.

• NYU is ranked for Overall Best National University #13 in the Center For World University Rankings, #15 by Global Language Monitor, #17 by QS World University Rankings, #19 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities, #26 by Business Insider, and #32 by U.S. News & World Report.

• NYU is ranked for Overall Best Global University #17 in the Center for World University Rankings, #19 in 4International Colleges and Universities, #27 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities, #38 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and #41 in the QS World University Rankings.

• U.S. College News & College Report ranks CUNY Baruch College #4 in Top North Public Schools and #25 in Top North Regional Universities.

• CUNY Hunter College, which is represented in lower Kips Bay by its Brookdale campus, #12 in Top North Public Schools and #50 in Top North Regional Universities.

With the high concentration of great educational institutions within lower Kips Bay, it is no surprise to see many New Yorkers choose to stay in New York City and that many non-New Yorkers choose to come to New York, particularly to the lower Kips Bay area (due to the high concentration of educational institutions), for educational purposes. This educational hub is important for the ultimate advancement of New York City, since furthering education leads to future advances in every field of life. Even though other states/cities may have more and/or higher ranked colleges, New York has a draw to it: a sense of unlimited opportunity and possibility.