SUNY schools — why aren’t they as popular as other OOS schools
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Anonymous
| Cold and in meh locations |
Anonymous
People look at Cornell as the flagship for NYS, even though only a few of its schools are now state-supported. The SUNY campuses tend to have a lot of 1960s and 1970s brutalist architecture - the very types of buildings that people aspire to tear down in many cities. |
Anonymous
I think one reason is that the percentage of OOS students at many of the SUNY schools is really small (e.g., less than 2% at Geneseo). Who from the DMV wants to go to a school where almost everyone is from New York? Even Binghamton is less that 10% OOS and, I think, Stony Brook is around 12%. |
Anonymous
| I tried to keep an open mind. SUNY Binghamton sounded great on paper, but we took it off the list right after we visited. |
Anonymous
| I grew up near Binghamton, on the PA side. It is a really grim area. |
Anonymous
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They're all hard to reach from here. EIther a long bad drive, or a flight and then a drive. Awkward locations, horrid weather, etc.
The SEC schools that draw OOS students are easier to reach even from here, and the weather and football culture seems to attract people. |
Anonymous
Uh, no. A couple of nice buildings that would fit in at Cornell amidst an otherwise blah campus situated in a moribund town between Buffalo and Rochester is not going to get a lot of attention from OOS students. |
Anonymous
Binghamton downtown is kind of OK, but Johnson City and the rest of Broome County is just sad now. |
Anonymous
Yes with the exception of Stony Brook, which is on Long Island, close to Long Island Sound Beaches in the town of Stony Brook, and a short drive to ocean beaches at Fire Island State Park. And the weather on Long Island is actually wonderful. 4 seasons (and winter is milder than ever). |
Anonymous
Stony Brook University and the University at Buffalo are the flagships: https://www.sbstatesman.com/2022/01/07/stony-brook-and-buffalo-formally-named-new-york-public-flagship-universities/ Go Seawolves! |
Anonymous
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My son applied to SUNY Binghamton and SUNY Stony Brook for physics, and both gave him really generous discounts so net cost would have been about UMD levels (we are in MD).
Stony Brook seemed to be very much a commuter campus -- we talked to a couple of recent grads and they said it was pretty dead on weekends. Binghamton was just depressing. For the comparison to what DS had as in-state options, it didn't seem worth it. Don't get me wrong, I think highly of the SUNY system in that NYS has done a much better job of really committing to its in-state students that there will be an affordable, quality education available at a number of campuses, in a number of fields, and at a range of achievements in HS. The other OOS flagships DS was considering were Wisconsin-Madison and UIUC. A lot more money than the SUNYs would have been but we were willing to consider it. But UMD vs. SUNYs didn't make sense for what he wanted as an overall package. |
Anonymous
Go Bulls! 
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Anonymous
Yes, I should have left that one off. I just copy/pasted and missed that one. |
Anonymous
Yeah, this is a good illustration of why the SUNY schools just don't make the final cut for many students in this area. It's not a lack of respect for what they offer NYS students; it's just that the value proposition just isn't quite there. |
Anonymous
No worries - I am from LI and didn't want to go upstate bc of the weather and the towns. But the education is great at the SUNY schools. Just a weird system in that there is no traditional football powerhouse style flagship. Many used to route for Syracuse as a orivate stand in. The SUNY system just evolved differently. |