<p>Currently, US News has Binghamton tied for 74th with several schools in the rankings. Do you think Binghamton will crack the top 70 in next month's rankings?</p>
<p>No. For several reasons: the transfer rate by freshmen is relatively high (recently rumored to be higher than reported in the past) thus the retention rate will be influenced; the lack of any nationally recognized athletic teams doesn't give any wide exposure of its campus; the frustration of the student body with the SUNY system, the dismal state of the facilities and buildings, and the depressing condition of the surrounding town are all measures of dissatisfaction regarding quality of life issues; a seeming lack of noteworthy or outstanding academic research being done there (or it's not being reported widely so as to bring needed positive publicity to the campus); and most important, the horrible and embarrassing lack of support by its alums. All of these factors will keep Binghamton right where it is and may even lower it a point or two. Contemporary schools in the ratings such as Indiana will be rising due to the quality of its business department (especially the Kelley Business School) and its music department which is routinely cited as being among the top five in the U.S. Ditto for advancements made at other such schools like Virginia Tech, Delaware, Fordham and most especially UConn. Of the schools lower on the ladder than Binghamton, ones which might surpass it are Baylor, American, Missouri and Auburn, all for aggressive and positive national media exposures which will jump their Peer Assessment scores, a large part of the USN&WR ranking. The one thing in Binghamton's favor is that its Peer Assessment score of 3.1 is also shared by Lehigh (#37), but that alone won't boost Binghamton into the Top 70; matter of fact, it may even drop. But all of this prognostication may be for naught when the 2006 edition comes out in a few weeks. But what can confidently be predicted is that no, Binghamton will not break into the Top 70. It simply hasn't done anything to deserve such a jump.</p>
<p>Guess Bing will not crack the US News top 70 again. Rankings to be released tomorrow have Bing at 74.
NYS's finest?</p>
<p>It's numbers are stagnant and going nowhere -- just like the school itself. As I said above, you've got to do something to go somewhere -- and obviously, unless Albany does a 180, Bing will stagnate where it is. What a tragic statement about the state of the SUNY schools and the state of New York which says basically, as far as higher education goes, this is the best we can do. Again, it's not good enough. My condolences to the students and faculty at Bing who try to rise above their station; perhaps in 10 years or more, someone somewhere will get the message and do something.</p>
<p>Exactly,
NY State seems more interested in maintaining mediocrity by meeting the needs of the average state resident. They have SUNYs sprinkled througout the state and where do the top talented residents; better public and private schools outside of NY. Where do the think the talent profs work?</p>
<p>Stony Brook is hanging on in the top 100.
What a disgrace for one of the highest taxed states in the nation</p>
<p>Stony Brook has completely changed the look of its campus. Both the undergrad campus and the medical school are undergoing multimillion dollar renovations. The faculty is top notch. This school is a rising star-just you wait and see.</p>
<p>If Stony Brook is a rising star, then Binghamton is a falling one. Someone in Albany had better catch it before it crashes.</p>
<p>Stony Brook barely makes the US News top 100. It had a decent science reputation which I believe was more at the graduate level.</p>
<p>of low alumni giving. They never actually sought it. Now they have just started.</p>
<p>The school is only 40 years old, many of the higher ranked schools are years older (including Binghampton, or Harpur college as it was formally known). Give SBU a chance.</p>
<p>Binghampton is also an excellent school, and in my opinion produces many students who go on to become fine lawyers. Stony Brook is more science oriented, however the music school is rated in the top 15 nationwide.</p>
<p>One thing to note about Binghamton is that its brighter and more astute students are pretty self-aware of their school, their fellow students and their surrounding area. The one term they use constantly is describe all of them is: ugly. The sharper and more ambitious students know that a year or two in this hell-hole will parlay itself into a respectable transcript when they decide to transfer out, actually up, to a better school. For some unexplained reason, these better schools (such as Cornell, Rochester, BC, Michigan, Penn State, Colgate, Villanova, Emory, Tufts, Georgetown, NYU, GW and Lafayette, for example,) welcome the Bing transfers. Maybe it's because these schools take pity on Bing students and accept them in order to put them out of their misery of having been associated with anything Binghamton, be it the school or the city.</p>
<p>Isn't it a shame that strong NY students have such limited options from their own state? NY spends millions of dollars for mediocrity. Students in VA, NC, PA, CA, MI, etc... are fortunate to have the option of an affordable high caliber public education. It is sad that many NY students attend Binghamton with the intention of transferring from NY's finest before they arrive on campus. </p>
<p>Thanks to the schools posted by colleparent for providing a safe haven for strong Binghamton students.</p>
<p>I've never been to SUNY Binghamton, but have heard it described as the "Berkeley" of the SUNY system that it's competitive w/ a lot of street-smart NYers there. Ive went to grad school and have worked with a number Bingy grads, and theyre just as sharp, if not sharper, than anything HYPSM puts out So Bings only 60 years old without those musty old Gothic buildings? So its not Cornell (which, dont forget that, behind its private Ivy facade, its also your states land grant school and partial state university)? So what? But I don't waste a lot of time on USN&WR. USN&WR rankings are what you make of them. And for me, and a lot of academicians, thats NOT MUCH </p>
<p> you want proof?</p>
<p>Michigan State University is a great school that should be a top 50 school, at least, but yet ranks around where Binghamton is according to US News rankings. MSU is tied in rank at the bottom of the Big 10/11 (with Indiana), and only 30-32nd best among state Us the place stinks, doesnt it? or at the very least, highly mediocre . Au contraire MSU has a tradition as being the pioneer land grant college with a history of long distinguished history of top programs in the natural/biological and, of late, physical sciences -- MSUs got the most powerful cyclotron in the world right now, and is competing for the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) with U.Chicagos renowned Argonne Lab. Its School of Education programs even USN&WR admits are #1, and MSU has got an excellent journalism school (top 5-10 by most credible, industry studies not pop culture beauty contests like USN&WR), a great music school and high quality business school (whose small, elite MBA program both Business Week and the WSJ both ranked top 30 and 20, respectively, in recent years). Then theres the leading residential college programs: James Madison and Lyman Briggs, which give a small college environment as well as rigorous academics. Study abroad is the biggest and best; the huge campus is drop dead gorgeous. The endowment cracked $1 billion last year and its one of 3 state Us without a major on campus medical research center to raise over $1 billion (Berkeley and Purdue being the other 2). The school had always relied on state funds until the 90s when it decided it better, belatedly, jump on the fundraising train. And raising a billion dollars in just over 4 years and ballooning an endowment to over $1 billion, when in 1990 it was just around $200M, is like going from zero to 60 mph in about 5 seconds of course, it helps to have such a distinguished alumni to draw on; who were once, bright undergrads who, were once, bright HS students who ignored the likes of USN&WR, and, you get the picture and did I mention that for its huge 35K (though very broken up into small, human-sized chunks) undergrad population, the median numbers are now running: 3.6 GPA, 25 ACT and low/mid 1100s (25K apps for 6.5K seats) MSU, for decades, over a century actually, has competed head on with the University of Michigan, an obviously, well-acknowledged great/top school, for the brightest kids in the state and often, the Midwest would a mediocre school so compete? Wouldnt bright kids, who opted not to choose U-M (no, despite the myth, MSU is not solely loaded w/ U-M rejects; a huge chunk of MSUs kids could have their pick of schools including the Ivies) Its amusing, every year USN&WR low rates MSU, then turns around and gives the place +12 or 13 pts based on the its better than expected stats of enrolled students in terms of freshman retention/eventual passage rate. Well duh? it wouldnt be a surprise if theyd rate the school where it should be in the 1st place </p>
<p> yet, despite all that Michigan State, ranks a lowly 71 by USN&W; not-top 50, 2nd tier. Below such powerhouses (sarcasm, here) as Penn State (which, historically, has looked up to MSU, academically), Ohio State and Maryland, the Cuse and Mighty USC (double sarcasm for these last, supposed Top-50 schools) Why? Because Michigan States a large, Midwestern (see: dull, allegedly) land grant, state school that shares the State of Michigan with grad school-oriented U-M , of which it is constantly compared to (which is absurd, b/c the schools are very different and great on their own merits) and, thus, is not sexy (by Eastern standards) not, er, sexy enough? The East (through, in this case, US News) has self-selected one large Midwestern state school worthy of praise, and U-M, for the most part. Which, supposedly means everything else is crap, right? at least, so says USN&WR, if were to believe them </p>
<p> . and from the gist of this thread, plenty of you apparently do.</p>
<p>The moral of this story? Dont buy into the hype. Dont quit on whats obviously a fine school, ... Binghamton, that is, just because USN&WR doesnt deem it worthy. Im sure anyone really knowledgeable about Binghamton can spew the same positive specifics about it as I have MSU, of which Im obviously very familiar Im not saying SUNY Bing or MSU, good though they are, are perfect But heck, neither are Harvard or MIT, if you want to get down to it. Obviously USN&WR has a way of waving its magic wand and turning ugly duckling schools into swans. But lets not let them, conversely, exile worthy schools to the dregs either; lets not buy into the hype that such schools arent worthy of the respect and interest of really bright kids and their parents just because of some superficial, entrepreneurial, non-academic journalistic hucksters holed up in a NYC high-rise deem them not to be.</p>
<p>Quincy, you need to see what the president of Reed College says in the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly about USN&WR rankings.</p>
<p>In the meantime, about Binghamton, I suggest that you look at <a href="http://www.studentsreview.com%5B/url%5D">www.studentsreview.com</a> about Binghamton and see what other people have to say about it. In short, they hate it. One grad refers to it as "a toilet." I doubt if MSU would be referred to with similar scatology.</p>
<p>Qunicy, I took the liberty of copying one of the more restrained negative comments about Binghamton from studentsreview.com:</p>
<p>The only good thing about this school is the price of its academic education. But that comes at a very high price for everything else associated with a normal, healthy and life-affirming college experience. Binghamton is modeled on a government bureaucracy: institutional, heartless, cold and impersonal. Is it Kafkaesque? The buildings are like an urban medical complex, dense and unfeeling; the residential halls are like public housing projects, but without the pimps and crackheads hanging around outside. The student body of 10,000 is hardened into about 100 unapproachable cliques based on ethnicity and NY neighborhoods or hometowns. There is absolutely no school spirit or school pride; of the thousands of cars in the parking lots, few have Binghamton decals -- and few students wear Binghamton gear to classes. If given the opportunity, 95% of the students would be elsewhere in a heartbeat; they would be at the school they wanted to go to, but couldn't afford or were rejected from - Binghamton was not the first choice for almost everyone on this campus. Out of shape, unhealthy looking and generally homely also describes the campus environment. While polite and considerate to others, the students in general are self-contained and by themselves. Are life-long friendships made there? Probably not. There's a feeling of loneliness to the students, that they are there to get out of it what they put into it, namely working for an end result whatever the sacrifices to their personal happiness. So why is no one happy to be there? Perhaps because it is a sterile factory with people pretending that they're getting a terrific academic education for the cheapest buck available. It's the only way they can justify being there and still maintain their self-respect. The student body, even on a sunny day, is under a dark cloud of apathy and resignation. They are just getting through each day and hoping that through all of this personal pain of being on this campus, there will be professional and economic gain when they finally get out of there, never to return. The best way to describe this campus is purgatory, a place to be between high school and work or graduate school. The prominent thinking is how do I get out of here as soon as possible; it's only a very few who even try to make the best of it while they're there. Even those students who claim to be at the "best of the SUNYs" and to be at a "public Ivy" know otherwise. They know that they're in the minor leagues while every one of their friends from high school is playing in the majors. And all of their attempts at defending themselves and their school to those same friends falls on deaf ears -- and they know it. The entrance to the school, which is across the street from a strip of car dealerships, should have over it the same inscription that's over the entrance to hell in Dante's Inferno: All hope abandon, ye who enter here. Binghamton may not be hell, but it sure is purgatory.</p>
<p>Collegeparent, many have warned about putting total stock in SR, although they can be instructive. I mean, I've seen some rants about MSU in SR, too, but they are balanced by mostly good stuff. I just think sometimes these magazine ratings like US News, which aren't professionals and are largely based on "reputation," that is, by some administrator at a top, peer college giving "their opinion" about another school -- often a school they have only scant understanding. -- like a popularity contest... Once a seed is planted in kids', parents', admins' minds, people have a tendency to run with it...</p>
<p>An example is the University of Maryland, in College Park. I worked on this campus and know its a good school in a relatively safe environment. I know that like Michigan State, where I went for undergrad, as a big state school, you're going to have all kinds of people wandering on and off campus and there will be some crimes -- usually against property than against people... But at UMd, a few crimes jumped off and, then (I'm sure), since college park is in Prince George's county, with a lot of middle class blacks, next to D.C., w/ a mix of poor and middle class blacks (and like any big city, a high crime rate), that the urban myth of Maryland being this awful, dangerous place where you're liable to get mugged or raped or, ... whatever, has taken on a life of its own... I'm sure U officials are miffed about this, and I know, they continue to put out fliers about safety while tirelessly putting out surveys showing College Park as not being the hell-hole kids/parents/alums say it is...</p>
<p>... All I know is that, for a number of years, I head nothing but good things about Binghamton. I'm just sorry to see a couple "mediocre" reviews from a NEWS magazine destroy that good feeling about what must be a good school... not flawless, mind you, but a good school...
... and I use my own, high-quality Michigan State U. as an example of what downs-side stuff this ratings garbage can reap. [I have to admit, though, I am heartened by the good comments MSU usually gets in StudentReivews.com now, if US News would ever pick up on this
].</p>
<p>Quincy, again look at the Atlantic Monthly article by Colin Diver of Reed about the USN&WR ranking -- Also, check out the latest edition of The New Yorker for the article by Malcolm Gladwell on the "social logic" behind Ivy League (and other) college admissions.</p>
<p>Quickly back to Binghamton, the fault lies in Albany with a disinterested state legislature which is responsible for a 70-odd state college & university system. Thus, no one gets anything of any substantial worth, most often the students. However, the fault is not all to be found in Albany, but on the Binghamton campus. What irks me most about Binghamton is this self-aggrandizement by those connected with it of its worth & reputation. While you may have heard "good things" about it, it was in fact preaching to the choir. And while you call it "a good school," it is in fact a mediocre school which, through whatever means, is somehow promoting itself as being better than it actually is. We know exactly what it is, an average school providing an average education (in comparison) to above-average kids; what is most irksome is that it's trying to position itself as something that it is definitely not ("a public Ivy") -- and subsequently it gets caught up in the lies about itself that it perpetuates. To quote the poet Wilcox, "o what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." Binghamton's definition of its own worth is entangled in such a web of self-deception. Again, the fault is not necessarily of its administration but of the lack of support by the state -- which will not in the foreseeable future do anything to alleviate or elevate it. The fine reputation for the quality of higher education found in New York state will fall to the private institutions such as Columbia, Cornell, Colgate, NYU, Hamilton, Barnard, Union, Skidmore, Vassar, Syracuse, St. Lawrence, Rochester, Bard, Fordham, etc.</p>
<p>Quincy -- further comment on USN&WR rankings, you might like this story on how colleges should really be ranked, from the Hartford Courant:</p>
<p>Hey, thanks collegeparent. I'm running out of town overnight, and will look at it when I return and comment. I'm sure it's interesting.</p>
<p>... we have some interesting comments, perceptions from kids on the MSU board -- not unlike some here for Binghamton ... feel free to add your thoughts. And outside perspective is welcome...</p>
<p>I graduated from SUNY Bing in 1979. I hated it. When I read the studentsreview.com comments I could not believe it - they perfectly reflect my experience there 26 years ago!</p>
<p>I could go on and on about this - but the basic problem with the SUNY system is that it is a closed system. 99% of the kids are from in state. You end up with some strange combination of a Queens-Long Island high school on steroids. </p>
<p>SUNY seems completely disinterested in getting competitive and attracting kids from around the country or the world. Zero diversity = zero interesting educational experience.</p>
<p>I am not bashing public universities either. I will most likely be sending my second son to an out-of-state, state school.</p>