The State University of New York Binghamton

Binghamton is a very hard school to feel any connection to. It is very big and impersonal. You are nothing but a number here. The administration cares about its reputation more than the students. The fact that the weather is horrible, the campus is hideous, the food is disgusting, and it is in a rural area doesn't help either. I want to emphasize that the town is a MAJOR drawback. There is NOTHING here. I find myself wandering the big ugly sprawling campus on the weekends. I think that if you are from the northern suburbs of NY (Westchester/Rockland) you are the worst off here because you will not fit in with the New York City/Long Island clique network and mentality but at the same time are not used to being in the middle of nowhere. At least the people from Upstate New York are used to this kind of area and weather and people from "the city" or "the island" think they are God's gift to the world and can hang out in their little exclusive cliques and complain about how everything is better in "Noo Yawk" (and by the way, I find it SO obnoxious how people here from Long Island speak with fake New York accents or "faccents" as they are sometimes called. I know people from BROOKLYN who don't talk like that.)

2nd Year Male -- Class 2006

Don't let the 54% female statistic fool you - THERE ARE NO SINGLE GIRLS AT BINGHAMTON. Unless you look like a movie star and are over 6 feet tall, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIND A GIRLFRIEND HERE. They are all snotty and either have a boyfriend at Binghamton or back on "Strong Island". The girls are so JAPpy it can turn the most liberal person into a mysogynist and the student body overall is so lost in the ideological left that it can turn anyone into a hardcore Republican. Binghamton is not very diverse. There are no black people and I swear, every other person I look at is Asian. This is just beginning to irritate me. The student body is mostly self-hating Jews from Long Island, and Koreans from Queens who think they are "ghetto" even though Asians have the highest income of any racial group in the US, and for some reason think they constitute a "minority". Everyone is always excusing Binghamton and saying "Oh well it's not New York City" but sometimes I wonder why the hell don't we just go to school in NYC instead of this rinky-dink little splotch on the map? Also winter is from October to April.

1st Year Female -- Class 2007

Collaboration/Competitive: A+, Education Quality: F

Overall, I do not recall my 4 years at Binghamton fondly. As an "upstater" versus a "downstater" I never really fit in or made very good friends. There were far too many kids from NY / Long Island / Queens etc. I'll never forget my first day there. I arrived at a dorm room built for 2, and I was the third kid there. The other 2 (with their parents) had virtually camped out the night before to make sure they would get the best beds, etc. They left me with the top bunk, one drawer out of 2 dressers, no closet space or desk space at all. Nice, huh? Sort of set the stage for the rest of my time there.I stuck my suitcase under a bed and lived out of that for 4 months until I moved out (into, what turned out to be an even worse living arrangement).

I never received ANY sort of guidance or mentoring at Binghamton and just sort of wandered through the 4 years. I recall hitting a lot of roadblocks everytime I tried to settle on a major. Either I was lacking some prerequisite, or courses were closed, or whatever. Consequently I eventually majored in Psych because I had no idea what else to major in. I got involved with a weird research program for autistic children in the Psych Dept., thinking it was a good way to build some "real life experience." In hindsight, I can see it was just a lazy, arrogant professor using undergrads as slaves for his so-called research. He gave out A's and 4 credits just for showing up. It really wasted too much of my limited time in college.

The student body seemed to think of themselves as all majoring in pre-law or pre-medicine. Predictably (and so boring too) they seem to be all lawyers or doctors now. The alumni journal is full of their big announcements about their apparent successes.

I receive all kinds of mail from Binghamton now - looking for money, of course. I always think, "Too bad they didn't pay half that much attention to me when I was there."

Alumnus Male -- Class 2000