The State University of New York - Oneonta

Date: Apr 13 2005
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
I attended SUNY Oneonta in the Fall of '04 for English, after taking a year break from college at another school (LIU). I left Oneonta at the end of October, after two months. I am writing this review for anyone out there who wants to hear all the good and bad, flat out. DO NOT consider this school if you are looking for a surrounding area with lots to do (people here go to Walmart for fun and that's about it), a "Stoneonta" or party school (it's not the big party school it is said to be. It's actually a dry campus for a good number of years now. Nobody drank or partied on campus and the only room of people I knew that did got caught. There are some shitty bars in town that the students who attend the school mainly to get drunk go to at night. You can see them every night piling as many people as possible into each student bus to go into the tiny town with a couple shops to get sloshed). There are also "house parties" on the weekends around the small town. These are small, broken down houses with two kicked kegs and a few hundred people packed inside like sardines, making it about 100 degrees and hard to breathe. This is the extent of the nightlife in Oneonta. You kind of have to make your own fun (and this gets hard, fast), if you are a student that wants to do more than get trashed at lousy house parties and bars. Let me also say that I am by no means a straight-edge. I'll have a few beers and hang out with friends, but I don't go getting trashed all the time, drinking until I puke, or hanging out at house parties or bars.

I am from Long Island, and as I mentioned, I attended Long Island University for a year. LIU was 1,000 students or less and Oneonta is closer to 6,000. (I'm not favoring either school based on size). At LIU, there were people from all over the country and everyone got along great and it made for interesting stories and interesting people. Oneonta is 99% New Yorkers. This is a statistic, not an exaggeration. (I met one person from out of state there, CT). The very large majority of them are upstaters and in general they don't like city or island New Yorkers. I noticed very soon after I started attending that the upstaters kept to themselves. My best friend at Oneonta and I went around our dorm the first few days to introduce ourselves and meet some friendly people. You would think it was the middle of summer with no students on campus, because everyone kept their doors closed and kept to themselves. (I figured this would change as everyone got settled in, but it just got more and more cliquey, to where it felt like high school again…) We were pretty shocked at this, as we are very open and friendly, good looking guys. (I do not have an ego problem, I'm just trying to convey the way the school is to the best of my ability). Needless to say, I was pretty floored. At LIU, when I went around the dorms with a friend doing the same thing, everyone ALWAYS kept their doors open and everyone was friendly and happy to meet other people. To me, that is something I need to have in a school.

For fun on campus, my friends and I would go swimming at the pool (you can't use the diving boards and it's not olympic size, but it's still fun). We had a lounge on the bottom floor of my dorm (aka "The Pit") where I lived and we played ping pong and pool. We also watched movies or sports games on TV. This was all fun, but again, I am a person who likes to get off campus and have lots of different things to see, experience and do for fun.

As far as the campus food, I was impressed. There are two cafeterias on campus (Wilsbach and Hulbert) where you can eat, that are not bad. You can get sandwiches made too. Then there is a third cafeteria which was my favorite of the three (Mills), which had pasta, meatballs, chicken, etc… and some really good wraps. Downstairs from this cafeteria in Mills is The Marketplace, which was going through renovations when I first came to the school… but became my main source of food once it opened. They make excellent smoothie shakes that are good for you and subs and heroes. I ate Italian heroes there almost every day, once it opened. The rest of The Marketplace is basically like a 7-11, which is nice because you can get food to keep in your mini-fridge in your dorm room. The last place to eat on campus (and yes, it is nice having choices) is the Sbarro's Italian Eatery at Hunt Union, which is the building far up the hill on campus that has pizza and everything else a Sbarro has. So yeah, the food was good.

Other ups about the school… you get cable in your rooms and internet and phone of course. The bathrooms get cleaned every day, which is very nice. The campus is very well kept, with lots of trees and good views of the mountains. There is a pond with a fountain in it on campus by Hunt Union, which is nice to go up there to relax and/or read (there are a few benches there too). There is a track, if you're into running. There is a gym, too. Laundry is FREE, definitely a plus. There is a campus bookstore in Hunt Union. There is a Dominos pizza place somewhere off-campus in town that everyone orders from all the time (they rip off students though and I personally think that Sbarros has better pizza anyways). The professors (for English) were average at best. Some were good, some were pretty bad.

I majored in English because I have always been an excellent English student and I liked to WRITE. However, all of my professors had me doing nothing but tons and tons of reading and I noticed I was the only English student in every English class I was taking (all but one were English classes). In fact, I never met another English student. I had more reading to do than there were hours in the day to do it, and that sucked. The longer I was there, the more I found out that everybody (in all other different majors) was doing an hour, tops, of work every day. Everyone complained they were bored and had no work to do, and I was getting nowhere because I had more than I could do. I would have switched my major, but the school did not offer anything else I wanted to do. Between this, the cliquey-ness and close-mindedness of an all NY'ers school and the whole area and town with nothing to do, (not to mention a roommate who watched TV full blast, 24 hours a day, forcing me to do all my work in the lounge) I withdrew from the school and left.

In this review of SUNY Oneonta, I have done my best to cover every area in detail and give a good feel for how things are there. Yes, I was only there for two months but I can assure you I know the school very well from the time I was there. I made some great friends there and it is not a bad school but I am looking into colleges in cities or places with a lot of life and tons of things to offer and experience for a young man like myself. I love hot weather so I am considering Florida. I also like a certain city up north that has more colleges than you can count and is pretty much run by 18-22 year olds (Boston).

These are just my own personal feelings, based on my experience at two different colleges and who I am and what I want out of a school. Remember to pick the school that you feel is the best for YOU. I hope this review can help someone out there and I wish you all the best of luck in your school searching! :)