The State University of New York Binghamton

Date: Jan 18 2009
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
In a nutshell, avoid BU. I can say without hesitation that coming to this university was the biggest mistake of my life. If a teacher has access to research dollars, your class will be half-assed, the teacher probably speaks English as a 3rd language, and you won't learn very much. It's good though, because I think they realize they can't teach and give generous curves. I would consider many of the classes I took here to be an absolute joke. The CS classes seem completely off-track and unfit to prepare one for any sort of CS position after graduation. They are too shallow (i.e. Robotics), delve into the wrong topics (Programming Languages), and/or focus too much on theory and not enough on implementation (Automata, for example). The CS TAs are almost exclusively foreigners with poor English skills.

I thought about leaving after every semester but my friends/family always talked me into staying. The campus is extremely depressing, all of the buildings aside from the Academic Advising building and Decker look depressed themselves. It really is only warm for the first week of fall and last week of spring. The locals are extremely poor and I am constantly hampered by beggars. I've never seen any violence but I have heard a lot of fights in the middle of the night. Downtown is ok, there are a ton of bars (though not my preferred atmosphere) and plenty of people to hang out with. The school clubs aren't bad; there are probably hundreds of them and they seem pretty active. The one time I ate from a school cafeteria (i.e. a campus run cafeteria. Not Taco Bell or Sbarro's) I spent the rest of that Saturday and part of Sunday in bed with stomach pains.

Conclusion: I've never been to any other 4 year University so I don't know how BU compares to others, but to be honest, I would have been better off not going to college then coming here. I am so glad to be done, though I'm not sure what I spent 30k on.

As a side note, in the form for submitting this review, there is an option to describe the students as "Broken Spirit". It is sad to see this option here because it means that this is common amongst college students. Good luck with everything, get the facts, read the reviews, talk to BU students studying for the same degree you wish to pursue. and above all else, do not believe what you see in the brochures.