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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Went to UB and also worked there. Familiar with Pitt, which has long been an aspirational peer for UB. Both schools are AAU members with strong focus on research and service. Pitt gets the nod in the rankings, but UB is an academically strong school without the widespread exposure outside NYS. While Pitt is an urban campus, the majority of UB activity is on the sprawling, suburban North Campus in Amherst built in the 1970s-1980s. Think modernism and brutalism with lots of indoor walkways. Some students live on the more traditional Main Street campus, which is on the edge of the city, and then the new downtown campus is primarily medical school and hospitals.

Another factor is that while Pitt courts a lot of OOS kids, UB undergrads are almost all bright students from New York State. (The grad school is very different and more international.)[/quote]

I'm a Pitt grad.  My dad was employed by SUNY Buffalo for a while when I was an adult.  I grew up in Pittsburgh and only observed Buffalo as a visitor.

I think the above review is pretty fair.  As a Pitt alum, I'd prefer Pitt for a few reasons.

1) Pittsburgh is prettier and more vibrant than Buffalo in the context of Rust Belt towns.

2) People have various hierarchies in their minds about the SUNY schools.  My first reaction was "Why not Binghamton?"  Is Buffalo the best SUNY for your kids' majors?  Closest to where they want to work after graduation?

3) Pitt has a solid Honors Program.  Haven't heard how SUNY Buffalo handles this.

4) Pitt is closer to DMV's job market and presumably your DC's home.

5) I'm cool with New York state (paternal family from there) but myself decided to decline schools with a mainly NY/NYC mindset.

I really had a good time at Pitt and learned a lot, had great professors, etc.  I graduated during a recession so getting a job was a struggle.  That was the one downside.

My dad's SUNY Buffalo favorite grad students did well for themselves.  They work in finance, live in a good neighborhood in Connecticut, and their daughter went to Stanford.  They all make more than me, lol.

That above anecdote kind of points to understanding the issue of what industries and geographies your alma mater is good at placing into.  NY students have a large statewide job market.  However, I explicitly knew I did not want to live in the NYC metro or NJ ever.  I also did not know what types of jobs I would head for until my senior year.  Eventually, I had to move to a larger job market (DMV) to get a job that would make full use of my Econ degree.  From what I now know, I would still prefer Pitt to GW (which it resembles), AU, or Georgetown.[/quote]

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