The State University of New York Binghamton

I am an international student and going to SUNY Binghamton was the biggest mistake I have ever made in my entire life. I did not know that I was about to hate everything in binghamton: people, food, academics, weather, city, administration, faculty, etc... That is why:

The majority of students are not friendly at all, unsociable, arrogant, cold, closeminded, snob, etc... If you are an international student and wish to make new friends in BU, don't even try, you're gonna get no succes doing that, nobody is going to accept you in their group or even bother make a new friend... people have already filled out their circle of friends or are members of a fraternity, the only thing is that you will " know " people that live in your dorm, or with who you had the opportunity to work with in study groups, saying "hi" "hello" "how are you", that's it. If you meet some compatriots that's a chance. If you do not, transfer at all costs.

If you really want to enjoy binghamton life, you gotta be a drinker and party all week-ends in downtown houses. you gotta also try to pledge to a stupid frat and then PAYING for having friends and fun. Personally, the frat concept is the stupidest thing I have ever known in my life, the thing is that you are paying each semester 100 $ or more for having a social life and for drinking free beer each friday night. You can have fun with them playing a popular moronic game : beer pong... that's it end of story, don't listen to those frat boys seeking for pledgers that they are "a family" and "brothers", that they will "help you academically"... LIES, they want MONEY from you and they want to have drink beer and have fun, if you want to fail from school then pledge...

If you're going to live on campus, I highly recommand you to live in the apartments to make your OWN food because if you go the regular dorms you will have to have a meal plan and the dining halls offer the CRAPPIEST food in the US. The jail food id probably tastier than the shit that is served to you 3 times a day.

Academically, if you are an international student and want to study as an undergraduate I will definitely advice to not do that, most international students come as graduate students and transfer from schools abroad. The courses are difficult for no reasons, tests are hard, averages are low, academical adviser are no help, professors are zeros...

One thing, don't ever listen to your academic adviser ! I have experienced that and I can say the engineering academic adviser (Sharon Santobuono to cite her) has ruined my carreer at binghamton, she gave me sophomore classes while I was just a freshman, she gave the classes she wanted just to fill them up. If you need advice anyways talk to Lorna Wells she's better.

Administration are cold arrogant and does not want to help, they are just trying to get out, there are thousands of offices in all the buidings the campus have, if you have a specific problem with payment or something the student accounts office can not help you, they're just a bunch of stupid robots that do the same tasks each day.

Since binghamton is the asshole of The United States of America, the weather is horrible, 5 entire months of snowing , everything else is raining or terrible cold with a big gray cloud in the sky, just 2 or 3 days of clement weather approaching the end of the spring semester.

The city of binghamton is populated with old and disabled people. The surroundings are a bunch of houses next to each other. The only distraction for binghamton people is going to wall-mart. It's not a ciy it's a SHITY !!!

Now, I have finsihed my freshman year at BU and I am transfering faaaaar from binghamton and I know that I have made a wise decision and I'm happy.

Anyways, if you want to have the 4 worst years of your life, come to binghamton.
Good luck

1st Year Male -- Class 2009

Binghamton- You get what you pay for
I transferred to Bing 2 years ago and it hasn't really been a pleasant experience. The classes have a lot of pointless busy work with condescending professor. Word of warning, If you want to go pre-med, look elsewhere. The classes set you up to for failure, the pre-med students are annoying and contrary to popular belief, Binghamton isn't that great of a school. I mean if you want waste four years of your life studying so you can attend university of sketch city in the Caribbean, go right ahead.

The campus looks like it was designed by blind architects taking a bet on who can create the ugliest and most impractical buildings. There's tons of construction everywhere all the time. Just when you think it will end, more springs up. The surrounding city isn't much to write home about. Vestal parkway has just about every suburban thing you need. There's also a wegmans and a mediocre mall. The city of Binghamton has a few good restaurants but has seen much better days. Everyone goes out to the 3 overcrowded, dirty bars on state street and then complains how crappy the nightlife is compared to NYC.

Speaking of NYC, most of the students are either minorities from NYC or Jewish Long Islanders with a bunch international students thrown in for good measure. All of these groups only hang out with people exactly like themselves. If you're not jewish, a minority or international and don't play on a sports team and aren't an uber nerd, you need to get extremely lucky to find people who will accept you. I have not encountered as much racism and discrimination as I have here in Bing. It?s definitely a huge reason of why I don't really like it here.

The school is cheap but it's super obvious the place is dirt poor. Its endowment is probably $5 Billy Baldwin gave to it out of pity. The money they do have they waste on constructing fugly, poorly built buildings and printer paper. The facilities aren't that nice and a lot of the dorms and classrooms look dirty. The dining halls are the worst. They always smell really bad and are dirty. Not to mention, the food is disgusting. The school contracts out food service to a company called sodexo who overcharges everyone for 2 day old leftovers shipped from a local prisons. If you eat sodexo you will get food poisoning.

At the end of the day if you're the type of person who buys imperfect carpet remnants at the local liquidator's warehouse, you're going to love it at Bing. If you want low prices, low quality, sketchy surroundings and weird people you can't go wrong.

3rd Year Female -- Class 2013

Faculty Accessibility: B, Campus Aesthetics: F

1st Year Male -- Class 2006

Perceived Campus Safety: B+, Social Life: F