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Introduction
Make sure that you realize what you're getting into: NYU doesn't have a real campus, it is so large as to be, at times, totally impersonal, and students are extremely competitive. If you're ready to feel like a young professional living in New York, this is the school for you--most people balance school, work, internships, etc. If you're not ready to be a full on adult (and not in the "Friends" way, either), go elsewhere.

Campus Life and Social Life
Freshman year is the only time when there are actual parties in dorms on any sort of a regular basis--then, everyone on your floor knows each other, so weekend parties can be wild. After that, floor-based socializing is nonexistant. Everyone then goes out to bars or clubs, so you'll need a fake ID and lots of cash to so anything social on a regular basis. If you're willing to risk getting caught/spending $10 on a drink three nights a week, it can be really fun and rewarding. Frats are nonexistant, as are sports; no one cares about them and almost no one plays them (our mascot is the Violets!). The club scene is relatively active, but many are extremely competitive--ie college democrats want to be political interns, and the debate club is future lawyers who would slit each others' throats to get into Harvard Law. Academics
Academic quality is decent, but can vary widely, as can individual professors and workload. In my Journalism classes, the teachers have been generally excellent and the writing courses have been ALOT of work but really helpful overall. Journalism is a very solid, but extremely competetive department. Politics, on the other hand, is supposed to be an incredible department as far as national rankings and faculty go, but I have found it pretty terrible. I've had three professors who I would consider completely batshit insane, and only one professor that I really liked. One teacher was an Isreali Anti-Semite communist who would go on insanely long rants for entire class periods, every single day. Another was failing 3/4 of a class, but after a bunch of people withdrew bc of it (meaning they still had to pay for the course,) then told us she'd curve it. Another was just crazy (i.e. would tell us to "google" questions that we asked in class), but our TA's just told us "theres nothing we can do, he doesn't listen to us." Workload is about average; most politics classes don't really require anything other than cramming before exams, and the same is true for non-writing journalism classes.

Student Body
People at NYU fall into a few basic categories: GLBT and proud, GLBT and closeted, from Jersey/Long Island, insanely rich, Asian/South Asian, and desperate escapees from the Midwest. Very few people at NYU can't be categorized into one or more of these groups. If you're Jewish, NYU has the largest Jewish population of any college, and it's an active community, so there's a plus. If you aren't (like me), you'll learn tons about it just through osmosis.

In Closing...
Going to NYU, in the end, is forsaking college as a distinct experience. If you want to feel like you live in the city and take classes somewhere, than NYU is right for you. If you're ready to start working on your career, if you want a killer internship, if you're extremely independent, and if you hate nature, then NYU is for you. If you want even the slightest feeling of being young and carefree--essentially, being a college student--go somewhere else, even somewhere else in the city. If you aren't ready to be thrust into adulthood, to feel guilty for not juggling 15 things at once, or to spend hundreds of dollars a weekend having the same amount of fun you could have anywhere else, pick somewhere else to go to school.