<p>So, I've pretty much narrowed my choices for universities and Binghamton is one of them. I would appreciate it if anyone could tell me about the overall comp sci program in general at Binghamton(is it good, bad, average, worth it?). Also what I really want to know (prefferably from past or current students) is if there are oppurtunities to go to companies like Bloomberg or perhaps Google with a Binghamton degree in comp sci. Is the school of engineering top notch? Are there good internship oppurtunities? Are the classes large? Thanks in advance for answering. :)</p>
<p>Class of 2013 CS Student here:</p>
<p>Department is good, imo. It does lack some of the cool higher-level classes that a CMU or MIT would have, but everything else is exactly equivalent. </p>
<p>Bloomberg recruits heavily, as the co-founder was a Bing alum. They come every job fair afaik. So does MS and Amazon (though they didn’t come to the last one, weirdly). Google doesn’t specifically recruit, but I did interview with them. IBM was founded in Binghamton and recruit heavily. A lot of professors were ex-IBM.</p>
<p>Lots of internships were obtained by my classmates. Examples: MS, FB, Amazon. I personally interned at JP Morgan my junior and senior years, and now I work at MS (where I am right now and should be working)</p>
<p>While I am a Bing CS evangelist, I wouldn’t call the program top notch. There are a few problems: not enough all-star faculty. not enough undergrad research compared to demand. not enough connections to some big companies and a severe lack of connections to the NYC startup sector.</p>
<p>All in all, I would always strongly suggest going to Bing over any SUNY, and always suggest going over any private school that costs even a dime more.</p>
<p>Thanks for the informative response. I have really wanted to go to Binghamton; the only other school that I’m considering is Stony Brook which also has a good comp sci program. Also, do you feel the courses that you took at Bing accurately prepared you for the work at your internship? And how is life at Bing?</p>
<p>Well, you don’t go to school to teach you what you need to know at a job. If that’s all you want, you’d be able to have the same technical competency by reading a middle school CS textbook. No, you go to school to learn how to learn, and I do think that Bing prepared me well for that. In my case, my internship required me to learn C# and XAML, which I had no idea even existed, let alone any competency in. I do think that my school experience helped me ramp up faster than average. I learned to be self-reliant; to find answers for myself rather than take other’s productivity down.</p>
<p>I think life at Bing is more balanced than most. Yes, there is a big drinking culture (but where isn’t?) If you’re into that, there are many people who go out Thursday to Sunday nonstop. There’s a big frat culture (which was featured on the front page of the NYT six months ago about their disgusting hazing practices) if you’re into that too. OTOH, there are a plethora of clubs that suit all interests. I personally did three or four clubs a week regularly. Everything from the Chess Club and Anime Club, to College Democrats & Republicans, to the Golf and Ultimate Clubs. I’m not sure it’s really any different than most other schools, but I hear that SB’s campus goes dead on the weekends bc its a commuter school. I’d do my own research on that if i were you.</p>
<p>Wow, you sound a lot like me with the chess and anime clubs. I’m not a huge partier but I am not opposed to it, thanks for awnsering my questions. Now the final challenge is to get accepted. :)</p>
<p>Stony Brook is a much stronger department than of Bing’s. It has more companies recruiting, more research expenditure, better course selections, and much more faculty members(implying more research opportunities, more interaction, and selective courses taught based on their interests). Also, our courses are much, much tougher than of Bing’s, I speak from experience. Everything of SBU is transparent so visit an SBU CSE course, and compare to the equivalent of Bing and you will realize every SBU course is project driven. In a basic, 200 level course, like CSE219, an SBU student is dealing with 25,000 lines of code. Don’t get me started on the 300 levels, where in a course like Databases, you are expected to build a competitor to Facebook, and then Google visits as the judge for the projects. Isn’t that fun?</p>
<p>I mean, it’s a top 20 research department, whereas Bing isn’t even a top 100. Bing is a great mediocre CS department, but comparing it to a school like Stony Brook, whose CS department encompasses 4 buildings, and is the size of Bing’s ENTIRE WATSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, is an insult at best. Do your research, and make an educated choice. I mean, SBU has a much older, experienced CS department, whereas Bing is peanuts in size and funding.</p>
<p>[Computer</a> Science Department](<a href=“http://www.cs.sunysb.edu%5DComputer”>http://www.cs.sunysb.edu) <– visit and learn more. Go over our faculty members, and compare them to bing. Also, being that Stony Brook is THE LARGEST CS department(public schools)in the U.S.A, we have alumni everywhere. 
From hedge funds, to all the top CS companies, they all have specifically assigned recruiters for Stony Brook. So when a Bing student has to apply online just like millions of others, an SBU student submits his resume directly to the assigned recruiter. :D</p>