The State University of New York College - Geneseo

Date: May 17 2011
Major: Physics (This Major's Salary over time)
Before I decided to come here, I had four schools in mind. They were Penn State, Binghamton, Stony Brook, and University at Buffalo. I was initially thinking about doing mechanical or aeronautical engineering. I didn't even know what Genesco was until I saw it while filling the SUNY application, and I had to pick 5 SUNY schools to apply to. After applying for Binghamton, Stony Brook, and University at Buffalo, I still had to pick two more schools, since I had an application fee waiver, and it was free for up to 5.

I clicked through some of the SUNY schools, but none of them had engineering until I came across Geneseo, and saw that there was a program called the 3-2 program where you do 3 years at Geneseo in Math or Physics, then 2 years of Engineering at Columbia, Penn State, University of Rochester, RIT, Alfred University, Case Western Reserve University, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Buffalo, Syracuse University, or Clarkson University. I applied for Physics 3-2 with Columbia, and Physics 3-2 with Penn State, completing 5 school choices.

Within a month, I got acceptance letters from all schools I applied to, and had to weigh my options. I learned that I would automatically be accepted to the Columbia Fu Foundation School of Engineering or Penn State University Park if I had a 3.0 GPA or higher in the 3 years I would spend in Geneseo. Not only this, but at the end of 5 years, I would have two bachelors degrees (BA in Physics, and BS in Engineering from Columbia or PSU).

I figured two bachelors degrees would be much more beneficial to me in my future, and didn't mind spending 5 years to do it, so I decided to go to Geneseo.

After I arrived in Geneseo, I was amazed by the beauty of the campus, and the academic facilities, especially the new Integrated Science Center building. It's a state of the art facility with a Nuclear Structre Laboratory with a 2 MV Van de Graaff accelerator.

I really liked the professors and was amazed by how helpful they were. Every one of them wanted the students to succeed and do well. They went out of their way to help me at times when I was struggling.

The students here are much smarter that I had expected them to be. In all my other schools, I used to feel like a geek because nobody liked math, science, and computers as much as me, but not here. Here, I have a lot of catching up to do to be an average Geneseo geek.

Overall, I had a great experience, and would not trade it for anything.