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Where in the country have you been?</p>
<p>I guess it may matter whether you are talking to college students, academics, professionals, college sports fans, etc, how much recognition there is for SUNYs and CUNYs.</p>
<p>I am biased, as I have 2 children, 1 grad from Oneonta, 1 at UBuff. It is the largest state uni in the country. 450K students. 64 campuses. As such, there will be something for everyone. There will be good and bad. Some are selective, some not so much. Recognition nationally is limited due to the 64 campuses each having their own names and identities. If there were one massively huge campus, like some other states, I’m sure it would be extremely well known.</p>
<p>Most CUNYs have a very selective honors college (Macaulay Scholars) that offer an excellent financial package and services to students with excellent stats. I think a lot of the Macaulay kids are boosting and will continue to boost name recognition for their schools, doing research with senior faculty, etc.</p>
<p>penzly, I agree. It also doesn’t help in terms of recognition that there’s no one (or two, like Michigan?) flagship.</p>
<p>Many of the campuses have specialized programs. For instance, New Paltz has a very good fine arts program. Anyone who generalizes isn’t familiar with the SUNY system. Unfortunately this means that they don’t attract a lot of OOS attention. Or maybe that’s a good thing for New Yorkers looking for quality education at value prices.</p>
<p>At just about any decent college anywhere in the country, you’ll run into a surprising number of students from New York and New Jersey, and you’ll assume that this means their in-state offerings back home aren’t very interesting. So while I’m sure all the SUNYs and CUNYs and state colleges in NJ have fine faculties with PhDs from many wonderful universities, one gets the impression that the majority of New Yorkers and New Jerseyites will go just about anywhere and do just about anything not to attend them.</p>
<p>Moop. That is very flawed. And not helpful at all. Do you have stats to back that up? Should I assume that if I meet a student from your state. That your schools stink. There are a million reasons to select schools and as was pointed out earlier the SUNY system is the largest. So using your reasoning, we can conclude that the SUNY system is the best.</p>
<p>Moop’s logic must also explain the surprising number of students from California that one runs into in decent colleges all around the country.</p>
<p>There are a *surprising *number of students from NY and NJ, period. If only a third of them left the state for college that would still be more students than most other states have in total. Also, NY/NJ kids go to non-SUNYs in part because are so many private options in the area.</p>
<p>As NYC kid in the 80’s, I applied to SUNYs as safeties but didn’t even visit. The private school I attended came in cheaper anyway, with excellent FA. I think now the SUNY rep has changed as I know many near-top-of-class kids who are choosing them, and many have become very hard to get into.</p>
<p>When the SUNY system was created by then Governor Nelson Rockefeller the concept was to spread campuses throughout the state rather than create one large massive insitution. That helped to create jobs throughout NYS and good will with many communities and continues to do so as well as accomodate the growing population of college-bound students, baby boomer generation. Initially there were four university centers- Stony Brook, Albany, Buffalo and Binghamton and these were the only units granting graduate degrees. The state colleges (SUNY Cortland, class of 70 by the way) and community colleges were a notch below. Many of the state colleges were originally teacher’s colleges known as normal schools. At some point in the more recent past, SUNY Geneseo sought to distinguish itself and repositioned itself as a “public ivy”, SUNY Purchase primarily the performing arts focus, SUNY Potsdam offers the Crane School of Music and so on.
CUNY is a different system in which there are the flagship four year schools - CCNY, Hunter, Brooklyn and Queens with lesser four year and a network of two year schools. Much of the CUNY history changed with the elimination of “open admissions” I believe back in the 80’s.</p>
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<p>Illinois, though grew up in Pennsylvania. Never heard of a single one of them. Have heard of something you all call “Bing” as result of CC. Sorry, these are all ciphers to me. Kind of like how Northern Illinois University vs Southern Illinois University would be ciphers to you. Frankly SUNY vs CUNY means nothing to me either and I wouldn’t have a clue which of these were good, bad or indifferent. </p>
<p>I think the same thing of the UC’s beyond Berkeley, LA and maybe Davis. Any knowledge I have is based off hearing things on CC. </p>
<p>It’s all regional. Everything. Yes, even the elite schools to a large extent.</p>