SUNY schools and selectivity..

College Search & Selection
1

Why do the SUNY schools have such a low selectivity rate?

We are from the upper Midwest, but D is interested in “not-so-big” schools that offer Linguistics - most of the SUNY campuses seem to - or at least, Geneseo, Purchase, Binghamton and Plattsburgh do.

Her parents like the affordable price of these schools.
How tough is it, really, for an OOS student to be admitted into the above SUNYs?

Binghamton and Geneseo’s stats of incoming freshmen match D’s the best.

Any insights into any of the 4 I listed?

Mostly NY students, or is there a good number of OOS as well?

Thanks!

2

Because the SUNY system as a whole is large, the individual colleges, though often selective, are not rejection factories. These schools are looking for a bit of diversity. A qualified OOS student should fare quite well in terms of admissions.

Percent OOS

Purchase: 15%
Binghamton: 11%
Plattsburgh: 4%
Geneseo: 2%

I hope your daughter pursues the one she likes best. Good luck.

3

Thanks! ^

4

SUNYs are public colleges committed to providing an affordable education to the children of NYS taxpayers. I don’t believe they offer a lot of grants to OOS students which probably limits the amount of OOS apps they get. Geneseo is probably more of a fit size wise for your daughter, but the size and location are probably what draw more OOS students to Binghamton & Purchase than to Geneseo.

The SUNYs are great schools, though. If you get an opportunity to visit, I’d make the trip. Good luck to your daughter.

5

Geneseo is the only one of those schools I have more than a passing familiarity with. My wife wanted to go there for linguistics many moons ago and the people I know who went there were very happy with it. Geneseo draws heavily from NY’s southern tier, but I don’t think they are any more or less OOS picky than the others, as someone else said it is probably more about location. Good luck!

6

My impression is that out of state students have a huge advantage over in state students. I believe they are accepted with scores and grades below those needed for NY residents.

SUNY has no flagships and has had difficulty attracting OOS students. None of the SUNYs compare, in terms of resources, aesthetics of the campus, size, or prevailing university feel (college town feel) and other dimensions to the top and middle range flag ships of other states (this does not include the Cornell schools that get NY funding). Admissions would be delighted to get more out of state students but the system is not known to be stellar. That isn’t to say that it isn’t. That is a judgement that the student may want to evaluate. Regardless, evaluation of an out of state student will certainly not be more stringent than it would for a NY resident.

7

I think you are really generalizing, @lostaccount. The town of Geneseo is beautiful; few colleges have the distinctive academic mix of Purchase; Binghamton and Geneseo have SAT scores that are a lot higher than a state flagship such as Indiana University.

8

As a NY resident I disagree. There is no indication of the schools being easier(or harder) for OSS students. SUNY’s are good schools. I know people who love Plattsburgh and Genesso.

9

I may be generalizing. Sure, but it is the case that SUNY does not attract out of state student like flagships in other states despite efforts to do so. And, yes Geneseo is beautiful but it isn’t a university. This one has students with decent scores and that one has such and such.

None of the SUNY university centers have what a school like Madison or Ann Arbor or UVA or Urbana or… have-a college town atmosphere in and around an aesthetically pleasing university with top students with strong SATs. I’m not the first to comment on this. This is not a secret.

I’m not saying that SUNYs are bad but that they have not attracted strong students from other states-except from the states that are contiguous to it. And, historically NY students have preferred to go to the flagships of other states-like Michigan or Wisconsin. SUNY is cheaper so many choose SUNY for financial reasons. SUNY is extraordinarily cheap for out of state students compared to costs for NY state students to attend flagships of other states.

10

When I was in New York State, top students went to Binghamton and Geneseo.

11

The SAT 25%-75% ranges for each these schools are posted, someplace or other. Last I looked, a few years ago, scores for Geneseo and Binghamton were relatively high for publiic universities.Those for Purchase and Plattsburgh were more modest. Where OP’s D fits in I don’t know.

I’ve seen no published data on OOS acceptance rates.

SUNY regards itself as having four “university centers” : Binghamton, Stony Brook, Albany and Buffalo.
Around here (NYC suburbs), the “better” students seeking a SUNY for economic reasons tend to gravitate to Binghamton. But we’'re downstate. Upstate they might tend towards Geneseo, which is a smaller school that enrolls a smaller percentage of downstaters.

Binghamton is a small city in upstate New York which has seen better days; it was economically neutered when it was abandoned by IBM some years ago. The university is located in a suburb actually, on a street that includes virtually every known “big box” and chain store in the United States.

Geneseo is essentially a small college town upstate. There is not much there beyond the college.

Purchase is marketed mostly towards performing and creative arts majors, though it has lots more than that. It has a nice suburban campus, in a wealthy suburb of New York City. Students probably get into the city on weekends fairly often. There are many commuters, yet still many dormers as well. I actually think it is an undervalued, good place to go to school, for the right person, if it has what they want.

Plattsburgh is pretty far upstate, I dont know anything about it really, It’s probably really cold there.

12

Then, @lostaccount, for your reply to be helpful, your information should in some way relate to the OP’s priorities. @BeeDAre’s daughter is looking for a “‘not-so-big’” school that fits her academic profile where she can study linguistics at a reasonable price. The universities you’ve mentioned in other states may not meet these criteria. This student would not be going to a SUNY in general – the topic of your posts – but to a particular SUNY. That’s the only college she would need to like.

13

BeeDAre can probably locate the parts of each post that are most helpful. If mine isn’t, BeeDAre can move to the next one. But address the OP more directly, it is not more difficult to gain entry to SUNY as an OOS; In fact it may be appreciably easier than it is for NYers. Merc81, maybe you can address the OP’s question about low selectivity.

14

I’m wondering what data some posters are using to buttress their assumptions that OOS students can get in with lower stats than IS students? That would be contrary to every state college I know.

15

From upthread: “My impression is that out-of-state students have a huge advantage over in-state students.” I think we’ve only been given the insinuation of data – or the insinuation of insider information – without any actual data. My guess is that full-pay U.S. and international students may have an advantage at some out-of-state schools, which may include the SUNYs, and that this may be part of the basis for the impression being offered.

16

FWIW, most Binghamton and Geneseo students of my acquaintance, or that I’ve heard about, seem to like it at their respective schools, despite what I personally regard as less than ideal locations,

SUNY Geneseo necessarily dominates the small town, from what I saw.

Binghamton U is a larger, multi-college university with a graduate program. The Binghamton metro is larger, yet the U still has a material visible presence in it. Downtown Binghamton at night is basically dominated by pub-crawling BU students.
As I indicated previously it is an economically challenged area. Parts of Binghamton proper look visibly impoverished and are not that safe. As fas as I know other parts of the city, and the suburbs (where the U actually is) are fine. Some students choose to live together near the “bad” parts though. (They don’t have to; they can live in the dorms on campus where it’s fine IMO).

Purchase is to me the nicest campus with the nicest location, yet my guess is students might like it the least. Because it is so largely a commuter school, it is probably harder to form relationships with fellow students. .And the campus is not so large as to be self-sustaining, one would need a car to really get places. And then those places are mostly suburbs. Which are not “action” places for college-age kids. There just isn’t that large a concentration of them out in the suburbs. On the other hand, there are some students who live on campus, and I think the school does provide trransportation for the train to NYC. One would have to visit and interview students who live in the dorms to get a better sense for how they really like it there. The other thing is, a realtively high proportion of the students there are “artsy” types, a group which your D may or may not fit in well with. But really there are lots of “types” there, it’s a somewhat eclectic mix.

17

I think it would be more difficult for an OOS student to get admitted to a university whose stated mission is to serve its state residents. The [SUNY mission](Statewide Plan for Higher Education 2004-2012:OHE:NYSED) is to provide top notch educational programs to the people of NYS. I’ve read the mission statements of other state universities and most don’t mention their in state students at all. The only one I’ve found so far that did (instead of a broad, “we serve the world” type statement) said that they serve their state, the nation, and the world. If I lived in that state, I’d expect my children to have some stiff competition from OOS as well as international students. As a NYS resident, I’m confident that my in state student has an advantage over both OOS and international students.

If you need the SAT score ranges of students at each SUNY campus, @BeeDAre, check the [SUNY Admissions Information Summary](https://www.suny.edu/media/suny/content-assets/documents/summary-sheets/Admissions_qf_stateop.pdf) or go to suny.edu to find more detailed information.

18

My opinion is that if a state university, in New York or elsewhere, accepts an application from an out-of-state student, then the application should be given fair – if not necessarily equal – consideration. Otherwise they should not accept the application.

19

@beeDAre, my daughter was accepted with a full ride as an OOS in 2008 to SUNY Buffalo.

She also was accepted into Hopkins and UCSD and other schools. She had a great experience in upstate NY and is back in California. (She also had exceptional stats and we liked the fact that they offered her a full ride)

She initially had a hard time getting interviews for her profession (engineering), at local firms, because the interviewers were unfamiliar with the engineering coursework in the SUNY system. She’s been blowing them away with her engineering background and they are pushing her into management and want her to recruit more from her SUNY school.

I think UB has more scholarship monies. The school has a split campus. The newer one (North Campus) in Amherst is where the majority of her classes were. She took the campus bus to south campus for several engineering courses.

20

Wow, very insightful comments! Thank you, all! Very helpful.

To clarify, D is looking for schools that have a Linguistics dept. and that offer more languages than just the usual French, Spanish, German… She is undecided on major, but is thinking of picking a LAS major and combining it with a minor in Linguistics.

We are in northern IL, Chicago-ish, and she’d like to leave IL, just because she wants to experience life somewhere else.

She PREFERS a small to mid-sized campus, but is unsure of whether she wants to be on a really small campus of less than 3k students. So a campus the size of the SUNYs would fit the bill for her.

We happened to look up the SUNYs on a lark and they seem to have solid academic offerings, incl. the Linguistics. After looking on college data.com, we see that there are plenty of students at Binghamton and Geneseo that have similar stats to her.

She is bright, got a great ACT score, 31 (taking again) but doesn’t have the perfect grades to go with it - an UW 3.5. Good, not excellent…

She likes the upper Midwest and cold weather, but has never been to the Northeast. She’d probably be fine with New York state, but she also wants to be in a “vibrant” city/town/community. She also really enjoys being outdoors, camping, hiking, kayaking, xcountry skiing… She’s an avid photographer.

I need her to be close to an airport if she’s more than half a day’s drive from home.

To give a better idea of what her tastes are - she also is looking at - U of Vermont, U of New Hampshire, U of Delaware, U of Minnesota-Duluth (she has actually wanted to go to this school since she was in middle school - I have a friend in Duluth and D loves the town and the UMD students there…), U of WI-Eau Claire, and Western Washington U in Bellingham intrigues her (learned of this one from a guidebook).

She has visited U of Illinois in Urbana and UW Madison and says they are “too huge”.

I would say, based on what was said here, that she would probably “fit in” at Binghamton or Geneseo, academically - but she may not like the towns themselves.

We are planning a road trip to the Northeast to see some of the schools on her list this summer, and we may swing by Binghamton or Geneseo if we can.

I was mainly curious why the selectivity rate was so low for these schools. Usually, when that’s the case, there are lots of OOS students applying as well…