<p>Thank you, this is an informative thread.</p>
<p>Another transportation question: For an out-of-state student (Pennsylvania--Philadelphia area) to get home from Binghamton, would she most likely take a bus to NYC and then proceed on from there?</p>
<p>After reading about the upstate/downstate issue in the posts above, I was wondering how difficult or easy is it for an OOS student to assimilate socially on the campus?</p>
<p>How far Greyhound station from Bing?
I think I can answer a question about bus to Philly. Greyhound goes from Binghamton to Scranton, PA. And then you can take another bus to Philly that stops at Willow Grove, King of Prussia and in downtown Philly.</p>
<p>I believe that jb12 is correct about getting from Binghamton to Philly.</p>
<p>The Greyhound station is 10 - 15 minutes driving from campus. There are several buses that go from campus to downtown Binghamton, where the bus station is located. The Broome County transit system is really reliable, as are the Off Campus College Transportation (OCCT) "Blue Buses". Additionally, there's a shuttle from campus to the Shortline terminal on Friday afternoons, and back to campus on Sunday. A taxi from campus to the bus station would run you $7.</p>
<p>Thanks, jb12, and also orcasand0wls for your addtional information. It sounds like the bus to Scranton, and picking up a connection to the Philly area would work fine--far better than having to travel several hours into NYC and then have to travel at least a couple more hours into PA.</p>
<p>Another question: How much of a "suitcase" campus is Binghamton? Is there much in the way of weekend/evening activities on campus that could be a viable alternative to the party scene? Thanks again.</p>
<p>How many people at Binghamton are from Upstate?</p>
<p>Most weekends, some people go home, but not everyone. For those of us from the city, it's expensive: $75 round trip. That's a prohibitively high cost for me, so I've only been home once, and I've never felt lonely. </p>
<p>I'm not a partier at all. I've been to two house parties, but both were hosted by "quirky" people, and were more about playing four square in the living room than about drinking. I've never been down to the bars. I've still found things to do here on the weekends. Late Nite Binghamton (Late</a> Nite Binghamton) attempts to offer alternative activities on the weekends. I've been to a few, and they're fun. I also spend a lot of weekends just hanging out at friend's places, watching movies, listening to music - normal teenage stuff, I guess. It was harder at first, before I fell in with a group of friends. But once you meet people who are like-minded, I think you'll find things to do.</p>
<p>I can't give you a percentage of how many people are from upstate, I don't know and I would have no idea where to look up the data. I feel comfortable saying that it's a significant percentage of students, I just don't know how many. Sorry I can't be of more help on this one.</p>
<p>re geographic breakdown:
<a href="http://www2.binghamton.edu/admissions/pdf/measuresofexcellence.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www2.binghamton.edu/admissions/pdf/measuresofexcellence.pdf</a></p>
<p>oo thanks for your answer! DOes greyhound go to Boston or like you have to go to NYC and switch? DO you know what is the GPA around that you need to get into bing?</p>
<p>Getting from Binghamton to Boston without a car is a pain in the butt. It looks like a round-trip ticket on Greyhound is about $160, and the schedule has you taking a bus from Bing to NYC and then transferring to another bus to get from NYC to Boston. When I (and most people I know) want to get from Bing to Boston, the first thing they look for is a ride share. If that doesn't work out, the least expensive option is to take a bus from Binghamton to NYC and then take a Chinatown bus (or Bolt Bus or Megabus, if you purchase a ticket in advance) up to Boston. It's a long trip, generally 4 hours from Bing to NYC and another four hours from NYC to Boston. Driving, Bing to Boston is about 5 hours.</p>
<p>I do not feel qualified to answer the GPA question, but I'm sure someone else will!</p>
<p>Hi, I'm from NJ and applied. Don't know yet if I got in. I have a few questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>I'm a little nervous about Binghamton being on the Princeton Review's list of schools with the most depressed students. I know those lists are a bit subjective, but have you noticed this to be the case?</li>
<li>Sort of answered upthread, but is there much to do for someone who doesn't drink or do drugs? Is substance free housing a good idea, or mainly used by the very religious? </li>
<li>How likely are you to be able to chose your community? Based on what you've said and other accounts I've heard, I definitely don't want Newing.</li>
</ol>
<p>BlazingFire:</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that I've noticed lots of people who are depressed, but depression is a complicated thing. I don't know what the Princeton Review's criteria for "depression" is, exactly. I know that our Counseling Center is currently stressed beyond its capacity: getting an emergency appointment is easy, but if you need longer-term help, you are generally advised to look for someone in the area. But does the student body seem actively depressed to me? No, not really.</p>
<p>(As an aside, if anyone has questions about the counseling center that they don't want to discuss here, feel free to PM me. I've got some experience with them and with mental health care providers in the area. )</p>
<p>You absolutely can find things to do! I don't drink. In general, this means that I avoid most of the typical off-campus parties, as I do not enjoy being the only sober person in a room of drunks. I've never been down to the bars or to a frat party. But there are more "alternative" parties that I've gone to where I've had a great time without drinking. It helps that my best friend here is also a teetotaller. You can check out the Late Nite Binghamton activities, the art walks on the First Friday of every month, you can go to a cafe. There's a movie theater not too far from campus. I think that people tend to be attracted to like-minded people. If you're looking for a group of friends who don't drink or do drugs, you will probably be able to find them. And even if you don't, most people I've dealt with will take a simple "No thanks" to the offer of a drink without pressuring you or asking for an explanation.</p>
<p>I've heard mixed reviews about substance-free housing. Some RAs are more strict than others about it, some people end up in substance-free housing because they couldn't get into one of their first choices. I wouldn't say that it's used mostly by religious students, though. In general, it seems to be used by students who are not interested in drinking.</p>
<p>When the housing selection becomes available online, you're asked to complete a survey type thing: are you willing to live with a smoker? do you want break housing? substance-free housing? etc. After you answer those questions, you're asked to rank the communities in order of your preference. The sooner you fill it out, the better chance you have at being where you want (from what I'm told, anyway). I got what I wanted because Hinman is a less popular community with new students, and it was my first choice (and a good one, I love Hinman!). You should be aware that a significant number of people requesting on-campus housing for the first time put CIW or Mountainview as their first choice. Obviously, not everyone can get their first choice.</p>
<p>How is the triple room doing? Still many in a triple or not?</p>
<p>Due to the large number of students enrolling, are classes harder to get? All large?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Detripiling is a slow process, but I believe that some progress has been made in the past few months. I know that the first thing that Residence Life wanted to do was get the people living in lounges into rooms, and I believe that that has been accomplished. The lounge of my building has been empty for about six weeks now. There will probably be some shifting around in the next few weeks, as Res Life knows which on-campus students are leaving on-campus housing at the end of the semester.</p>
<p>Some classes are large, some are small. Even the largest lectures break down into a weekly discussion section where it's a much smaller group (15 to 25 students, generally) led by a TA. You generally get to know your TA pretty well, and s/he is almost like a liaison between you and the professor in larger classes. If you have a good TA, this is great. If you dislike your TA, it can be problematic.</p>
<p>As for registering, it's always harder for freshmen than it is for sophomores, and harder for sophomores than it is for juniors, and so on. The more credits you have, the earlier you get to register, the more likely it is that you'll get what you want. BingBuilder.com</a> - Building Better Schedules has been an invaluable resource for me when it comes to figuring out how to schedule my classes, making up two alternate schedules, and checking to see if the classes I want are full. You will be much better served if you know what you want when you go into orientation. Because I knew what classes I wanted and had several back-ups for each, I was able to craft a pretty decent schedule.</p>
<p>How widespread have "forced triple" housing assignments been for the freshmen at Binghamton? Are most, or all, freshmen placed in forced triples? Or, is there some kind of a window of time where, if you get your housing deposit in early enough, you can possibly avoid forced triples, or "supplemental" (lounge) housing? Thanks.</p>
<p>this year there was a LOT of tripling, as well as people housed initially in lounges. they were way over accepted -- ie a lot more people accepted offers of admission than they expected. that was not typical for prior years -- previously there might be some triples, but not nearly as many.</p>
<p>so it's hard to know what will be next year -- it depends on whether they are better able to manage their enrollment to keep it lower where they really intend.</p>
<p>iamhere is spot-on. This year was completely unprecedented in terms of the number of students who accepted an offer of admission and wanted on-campus housing. When you pay doesn't effect your being tripeled or put into a lounge, as far as I know. It's just luck of the draw. I can tell you that some communities don't have triples. I live in Hinman, the rooms are too small to be tripeled. But if you put Hinman as your first choice, you run the risk of being in a lounge. If you're in a bad housing situation, I don't know what's worse, a lounge or a triple! I would not say that most freshman were placed in forced triples, but I would say that quite a few were - far more than have been in the past, from what I've heard.</p>
<p>iamhere and orcasand0wls: Thanks, once again, for your informative replies. My D is currently a HS junior and Binghamton is pretty high up on her list of prospective colleges. It seems to have a lot going for it, although the housing situation is a bit of a concern...particularly since Binghamton is attracting more applicants than ever, given the very uncertain economy in the country. Hopefully, the administration will figure out some way to manage their yield more effectively.</p>
<p>well, i guess how any individual applicant feels about it may depend on whether managing the yield better ends up meaning they don't get admitted. :)</p>
<p>i know MANY hs students now applying to binghamton who would have been confident of their chances last year who are now really concerned as to whether they will get in -- and if asked, many of them would be rather be tripled than rejected.</p>
<p>and quite honestly, tripling isn't an issue limited to binghamton -- i know plenty of freshman at expensive private schools who were tripled..</p>
<p>^iamhere, I know, from personal experience, that the on-campus housing crunch isn't limited to Binghamton, or public schools in general: 1) At D1's (private) college, where she's in her second year, around half of each of the freshman classes, for the last few years, have been placed initially in forced triples. Luckily, we got her deposit in early enough for her to be assigned to a double room--which is why I asked, in this thread, about how soon to get the housing deposit in for Bing. To her school's credit, just about all of the forced triples were "de-tripled" by the end of the fall semester. 2)At my own college(also a small, private, school), back in the late 70s/early 80s, <em>all</em> freshmen were placed in forced triples for the entire first year. Unfortunately, for most (but not all) people I knew, this arrangement didn't work out well: Two out of the three roommates would get along well and become good buddies, and the third roommate would become the odd (wo)man out--depending on the maturity and thoughtfulness (or lack thereof) of the roommates involved, the situation, became pretty unpleasant. So whenever we hear about forced triples at a school it does give us some pause. </p>
<p>That having been said, D2, has started to do a decent amount of research , and is really interested in Binghamton, along with some other schools(at least one of which--a private school--also has some forced-triple housing assignments for first-year students). From what I've read about Bing. it does seem like it offers a student tremendous value for the relatively reasonable tuition, room and board costs, even for an OOS student. The current housing crunch is definitely, IMO, something to consider. Since D2 is still a junior, it will be interesting to see how Binghamton's admissions and enrollment plays out for the (HS) class of '09.</p>
<p>I'm also in Hinman and both the people I've spoken to that lived in the lounges, liked it better there than in the room they were eventually moved to.</p>