What do the majority of students at Binghamton University have in common? None of them wanted to be there.
Committing to a college is probably one of the biggest decisions you can make as a millennial. But what if you’re not happy with your decision? If you attend Binghamton University, you've most likely experienced this doubt at least once before.
Chances are if Binghamton comes up in conversations, it’s most likely going to be followed by complaints about the school — the perpetual cold and gloomy weather, the student body largely dominated by those from NYC and Long Island, the sketchy downtown scene, Sodexo — it’s easy to pick out the flaws. It’s not so much that people don’t like the school, but that nobody expected to end up at their nearby state school located in the middle of impoverished Upstate New York. With its reputation as being everybody’s “second choice,” in addition to “where Cornell rejects go,” Binghamton is often devalued by its students.
Although Binghamton offers challenging academics and friendly people, there’s this underlying vibe of regret that pervades throughout the student body.
In my experience, most people who chose to attend Binghamton didn’t do it out of whim. Many students, myself included, unwillingly chose to attend Binghamton because they couldn’t afford their top-choice private schools they got accepted to. Other students, on the other hand, chose to attend Binghamton as a fallback from being rejected from the Ivy Leagues. But what about people whose top choice was Binghamton? Where are they?
Nonetheless, there is an obvious sense of inadequacy that Binghamton students experience. Personally, I’ve struggled with this for an entire semester. Like many others, I considered Binghamton my safety school. Because of this, I felt like all the hard work and exhaustion I’d put into excelling in high school didn’t amount to much. I remember just weeks after settling into Binghamton already beginning to fill out transfer applications for more “highly regarded schools” because I felt like “I could do better." Although this preconceived notion I’ve held onto for awhile is long gone, I still experience insecurity over my worth from time to time. So while I’d check my Snapchat at C4 Night Owl, seeing my hometown friends having the time of their lives at their dream schools, I’d bitterly think to myself, “Damn, that could’ve been me.”
And it’s not just me who’s experienced something similar to this. Everyone I've met at Binghamton holds some degree of dissatisfaction going here. One girl, I met even told me that on move-in day, she hysterically cried during the drive up because she had wanted to go to NYU instead. Keep in mind that we were all naïve, insecure freshmen with a crippling desire for validation over their decisions, but I digress.
Despite all the complaints students throw around, we all chose this school for a reason. We chose Binghamton because it provides us with an affordable, high-quality education that meets our financial and academic needs. I don’t know about you, but I refuse to drown in crippling student-loan debt for the rest of my life. Just because the campus doesn’t look like Hogwarts or that it’s not ranked the highest or that the weather isn’t 70 and sunny all year round, doesn’t mean your experience here is any less worthy of someone who goes to Columbia or UChicago or any other top-tier school. Binghamton has its own gems too! I mean, where else can you enter a shitty, underground bar that looks vaguely like a sex dungeon by showing the bouncer a Pokemon card? Only at Binghamton!
So to answer the question that I posed earlier, “Are Binghamton students happy, really?” The answer is “Yes.” It doesn't hinder on the school itself, though, it’s the experience you make out of it.
