Hi! So I literally have 5 days left to choose a college and I’m having a really difficult time deciding…I got accepted to all the schools I applied to, which were Bing, Fredonia, Oneonta, New Paltz, and Ithaca College. I narrowed it down to Bing, and Fredonia, and Ithaca, but I really had Bing in the back of my mind because I had never gone to visit. I went this past weekend to the admitted students day and really, REALLY loved the campus and overall vibe of the school compared to others I’ve visited. My issue, though, is that I want to be an English major, and I haven’t been able to find any useful information from anywhere on the English program at Bing. Even the school’s website doesn’t provide much detail, and it says you basically have to take five English courses to complete the major, which confused me a lot. Can anyone give any info on the English program? Is Bing lacking in that department because it’s so strong in the SOM? I know Ithaca has an amazing program, but it’s really expensive, and Fredonia’s is pretty good too, but I just loved the vibe I got from Bing. I just want to know if the academic experience will be worth my time and money for this major. Help! Thanks!
Hi, I was an English major at Bing (and now an English teacher!). You must be misunderstanding something on the website, you actually need a minimum 10 English classes for the major, which is pretty standard for humanities majors (it’s the same requirement for History, for example). It’s a large and popular department, I wouldn’t say it’s lacking at all.
There are a few requirements you need to take, such as a Shakespeare class, two British literature classes, an American literature class, and a literature theory class. Except for the Shakespeare, you have options. So for example, you could take a general “Brit Lit II” but I chose “Sex, Adventure, and Violence in Victorian Lit”. For the American lit requirement, I took “Literature of the Civil War.” Other than those requirements, you can take whatever you want in the English department, and there are soooo many options. Children’s lit, Lit through Cinema, Apocalyptic Lit, Holocaust Lit… if you love books, there’s plenty of options.
The large majority of classes had about 3-4 essays throughout the semester, and that was your grade.
Thank you so so much for your help! Yes, I was not reading the page on the website correctly haha. Glad to know there are lots of options for classes. If you don’t mind me asking a few more questions, how big were the typical English classes? Was it difficult to get into the classes you wanted? And was it hard to get into the housing you wanted? I really, really want to live in a suite but now I’m worried because I would probably be one of the last people to pay my deposit, so I would be getting last picks…
Most classes were around 30-45 people max. There were a few that were in the 60-70 size, and Shakespeare was a large lecture class. So was Children’s Lit. But these had a small discussion section of 20ish people so you were able to engage in conversations like that.
For the most part, everyone was able to get into the English classes they wanted. There’s a lot of diversity in class choices so most people didn’t all want the same things. The only ones that literally filled up immediately were Ryan Vaughan’s classes like Lit through Gaming which are all known as easy As. I don’t have firsthand experience with housing because I was automatically placed in the scholars community so I never had to deal with the experience, sorry!