I know that students who are in Binghamton Harpur looking to do an IUT to the SOM are required to take pre-requisite courses including calculus, microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics before applying to transfer into the SOM. However, as I am currently directly admitted in the SUNY Albany business school, and looking to transfer into the Binghamton SOM, do I have to take these same pre-requisite classes as BU Harpur students to be considered as a transfer applicant?
Are you definitely transferring out? Can you explain why? I was seriously considering it. Thank you.
@tucktuck17 I am considering transferring out. Has nothing to do with the quality of the education. The business school here is absolutely phenomenal. My issues have been with the rest of the student body. With the bulk of students not taking academics seriously here, and even was confronted by my “ghetto” ex-roommate and his friends. It’s a shame that the rest of the student body has become so compromised over the years.
A few months ago there was an article in the Albany Times Union (cannot provide the link because I don’t subscribe) that reported NYS is actually contacting students who have flunked out of SUNY schools after receiving their free tuition and encouraged, counseled, and made possible for them to return to SUNY for “yet another try” with free tuition once again. Herein lies just one of the fallouts of free college tuition. The quality of your students has suffered. Many of these students have nothing to lose. They aren’t spending a dime and then when they flunk out, the state invites them back.
Binghamton is the most selective SUNY (or one of the most) so the OP is less likely to encounter this problem there. Good luck.
@Empireapple, The Excelsior Grant only covers the ~$6k tuition. It doesn’t cover fees, books, housing, food, or transportation costs. The education of students who receive it is hardly free. Students whose families earn under $125k/year are eligible to receive the Excelsior. If they don’t maintain SAP they lose it, but if they successfully complete the credits before the end of the academic year they get it reinstated. It’s not a special invitation, it’s written into the rules and applies to everyone. OP didn’t say the people who are giving him a hard time are low income scholarship students. It’s quite a jump for you to say this grant is the cause of his problems
Low income doesn’t mean lazy or obnoxious.
OP, I would expect anyone transferring into Binghamton’s SOM has to meet the same prereqs as students who are applying internally. If you want to be certain, call and ask.
I am actually a recipient of the excelsior scholarship myself. I come from a low-income family. I am still paying for part room and board that is left over after my Presidential Scholarship is applied. The students giving me the problems come from a mix of low-income and not. I am not sure on that. I am under the impression that many of the SUNY public schools are becoming increasingly harder and harder to get into these days- as they are a great value for in-state students. Except for Albany. They went from being one of, if not the most selective SUNY school a couple decades ago to dramatically lowering their admissions standards now. Shame
It isn’t just Albany. There are some that are selective (Bing, Geneseo) but some others are not. Yes, Excelsior still pays for their housing but the fact that NYS is giving second chances, on the taxpayer $$, for those who have flunked out is ridiculous.
Albany is not a small school. You’re going to find all kinds of students there.
What makes you think they’ve relaxed their admission standards, @yankees2001? Do their Common Data Sets reports show a drastic change over time?
@austinmshauri Yes- the statistics online do show a dramatic drop. As do the many conversations I’ve had with adults who either went to Albany or regarded Albany as a top school in the 80’s and 90’s and were aware of what the school has become.
Like many of the SUNYs, they have an EOP, or “Equal Opportunity Program-” this is what @Empireapple is referring to. It is a program for academically challenged students from inner cities to have a second chance and gain admission to schools they otherwise would not have been admitted to. Not certain on this, but it seems as if Albany’s EOP Program is much larger than at the other schools. I guess it’s nice that they offer this, but many of the students are there just to goof around at the expense of academically minded students like me.
Maybe you’re looking in the wrong place. Albany’s records show an increase in both their mid-50% ACT and SAT scores, and the average GPA of accepted students is several points above what it was in the 1980’s.
There are well over 13,000 undergrads at SUNY Albany. Roughly 5% of them (~800) are EOP students. The chances of your running into a significant number of them is very small.
The overall quality of the student body is lacking, not just the EOP students. Except for a few top select programs here, many students just come here to party, and a handful of people in my class (I’m a freshman) have already dropped out because they were doing so poorly… My goal is not to bash my own school… But all one must do is do some searches, on this site alone, and see the abundance of complaints similar to mine.
It is very hard for a top, bright student to rise above the fray here. I had heard some of the negative rumblings about the school before coming, which I dismissed as just “talk,” but I actually had to switch dorms to a different area because the place I was before was a wild, rowdy drug den. Constantly shouting and loud music, a few times the tables in the common area were flipped over. There are quite a number intelligent students here as well, and Albany should be doing everything in their power to attract more of these students, and not the type that I referred to before.
SUNY Albany has actually improved - adults always remember that 20 years before college was much more difficult and the students much more serious. 
However it’s true that outside the honors college and a few programs (including business) Albany is not for the most academically-minded students, who tend to go to Bing or Geneseo (Buffalo for engineering, SB for science/CS). So, apply to both and to both honors programs. Email transfer admissions. Don’t complain about Albany - look through the website (honors college, SOM, major) to find solid reasons why you want to transfer. Make sure to keep your grades up as your transfer also depends on that.
Finally, if you’re low income and have strong credentials, run the NPC on Colgate, St Lawrence, Cornell ILR.
As an adult who was in college 20/30 years ago, I can attest that Albany is less competitive now than it used to be. I assume that the average GPA and SAT scores back then were lower than they are now…but that is because average SAT scores were much lower back then. SAT prep courses were the exception, not the rule and Khan Academy didn’t exist. Also, “weighted” GPAs were nowhere near as common back then so GPAs appeared lower. Anecdotally, there were many many students in my high school class who were rejected from Albany but got into Geneseo, Buffalo and Stonybrook. Basically, Albany was right behind Binghamton at that time in terms of selectivity.
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And of the parents I know, not a single one says that college was harder back when we were in it. Quite the opposite, most of us acknowledge that if we were to apply to our alma maters today, with the same credentials we had back then, that we probably wouldn’t have gotten in. This is across all schools because average GPAs and SAT scores etc have increased
It generally pays to check the school’s website first.
https://www.binghamton.edu/admissions/apply/transfer/index.html
Hello, I am undecided but interested in accounting. I was accepted into Harpur at Binghamton and Ualbany. Binghamton seems like a great school but the intra university transfer to SOM seems very difficult. Do you have any advice on where i should go?
Definitely Albany. My friend at Harpur in Binghamton just finished his freshman year at Binghamton and is going back to community college next year because he couldn’t get into SOM. He didn’t want to pay 27k for a school that he couldn’t major in accounting in. Plus Albany has just as good of an accounting program as Bing even if the rest of the University isn’t as good. The faculty have even closer relationships with the Big 4, the students have better access to internships in the city, and it’s less competitive to be that the top of the class. The requirements for IUT to Bing SOM are insane. They want a 3.8 or higher this year, and if you pass/fail a class, they consider that a C grade. A 3.8 might not even cut it now because space is extra limited, and spots only open if someone drops.