By Ashley D’Arcy
We’re all familiar with the Lady Gagas and the Alec Baldwins, the Martin Scorseses and the Chelsea Clintons. But what about the NYU grads who get less media attention? NYU has produced all types, from chess champion to cereal creator. Check out a list of our favorite alumni, and be sure to leave your picks for NYU’s best (and worst) graduates in the comments.
Liliana Lovell, founder of Coyote Ugly Saloon: Now you know whom to blame (thank) for all of those nights you ended up on top of the bar.
Jay Schulberg, creator of the Got Milk? milk mustache ad campaign: This man helped to define the 90s. There are so many school lunch milk mustaches to his credit.
Amy Heckerling, director of Clueless: Though we’ve steered away from the show-bizz types to avoid telling you things you already know, it must be acknowledged the director of this seminal work slouched through the same corridors we share.
Arthur Agatston, author of The South Beach Diet: It takes a certain type of genius to orchestrate a massive scale health craze.
Frederick Cook, explorer: To list “explorer” as your profession is to have truly lived. That is the end goal for us all, even if you don’t realize it.
Jonas Salk, discoverer of the Salk vaccine: This means nothing to you because he is amazing! None of us have to worry about polio!
Cristina Federica de Borbon, Princess of Spain and Marie-Chantal Miller, Princess of Greece: Self-evident.
John Harvey Kellogg, co-inventor of Kellogg’s cereal and Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s: Self-evident.
Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes: Yesterday while listening to the Beach House leak, I thought that I heard that 60 Minutes ticking clock. That show is a part of American consciousness. We sincerely miss Andy Rooney. (Admittedly Hewitt only did some coursework at NYU.)
Brian K. Vaughan, comic book and television writer: We strongly recommend Y: The Last Man. (And he was involved as a writer, story editor and producer in Lost for seasons 3–5, if that means anything to you.)
Anjelina Belakovskaia, U.S. Women’s Chess Champion 1995, 1996, 1999: What we lack in football team, Belakovskaia more than makes up for in chess championships.
[image via]
