I've dug through this community and through the Internet, and I have gotten completely mixed results on how well Binghamton is for job placement. So I am hoping you guys can help me to debunk the confusion and give me some advice and how well their school is for IB, especially financial incentives considered.- NYU would put me 300,000 in debt while I could graduate Binghamton almost debt free
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never heard of it, but I'm on the west coast
It’s a SUNY school, so a majority of its placement I’ve heard has been within the Northeast (especially NY)
Use the close proximity to NYC to your advantage
Is NYU arts or stern? Binghamton isn’t going to place that great into anything. I also don’t think it makes sense to be 300k in non-dischargeable debt, it is psychologically crushing when you’re working and it will take longer to pay off than you are projecting now. I’d go to Binghamton, get a 4.0, transfer to a school of NYU’s level with a scholarship. Even if you do poorly, you will graduate a free man and maybe had four years of debauchery.
Do you think that would hinder my networking going into a school a year or 2 after getting into college? Also, what’s your thought about getting my bs at a school like Binghamton and then pursuing an MBA at a more prestigious school like Stern or Wharton?
You have a long career to network. Those three years at another school, especially if near a sizable city, are plenty of time to get your foot in the door in whatever industry you settle on. I don’t know how non-targets are viewed in MBA admissions exactly, I know undergrad quality is much more of a factor than med school or law school admissions. It is probably doable with a very good gpa and respectable work experience.
Not trying to be condescending here but you’re young. You probably don’t know the types of work or organizations or environments you’d thrive in with much precision. IB sounds good, has low barriers to entry time wise (you can be 22), and pays handsomely. You’ll find plenty of other options if you dig at Binghamton. 300k can ruin your life in so many ways, it is hard to grasp how it is allowed to go on.
Current Stern UG here. I actually went to a different school my first two years (non target similar to Bing) and then was fortunate enough to transfer into Stern going into my junior year. The move was totally worth it because I'm fortunate enough to be starting FT at an EB (Think EVR, PJT, CVP) and tbh those firms (including BB and MM) wouldn't even have looked at me if I stayed at my old school and that's just the harsh reality about non targets. Also don't worry about how it would affect your networking bc if anything it helped me bc it gave me more of a story to tell.
Never heard of them. I’m in the Midwest
I'm not American so maybe I'm reading this wrong, but is this the uni that Eric dissed Harper for attending in Industry?
Yes sadly😂 it was super ironic watching that episode
Si.
yea lol, i literally watched that scene and googled 'is Suny Binghamton a target' and this thread popped up
There is guy who got into PJT RSSG from this school. Interesting.
He summered at Blackstone, was a D1 athlete, and had major connections.
It’s a good school yeah. Is it good for the types of jobs you probably want based on being here? Not really. It’s not bad but it’s pretty far from NYC and other schools like Pace (worse in general) or Fordham (better especially if in business) . These schools will make it much easier to place in to the jobs and internships you want while also allowing you to intern during the school year. Obviously NYU and Columbia are better so I’d say Fordham is it’s “competitor” but I don’t think the two are equal at all for business.
I’m guessing Stony Brook isn’t too much better either right?
Binghamton is non target, same tier as Maryland, Rutgers, Baruch, Fordham, Wisconsin, Auburn
I grew up near Stony Brook. When I was in high school (a while ago now) Binghamton was the flagship SUNY school and generally regarded as being the best, at least at the undergraduate level. I would be surprised if Binghamton didn't place motivated kids into good finance jobs given that it's position as being probably the best undergrad state school in NY, but I could be wrong.
I'd imagine that a place like CUNY Baruch would be a more appealing option for many kids that want to work in finance.
Stony Brook has a major commuter school reputation but academically it may be the very best of the SUNYs given the strength of it's STEM departments. The founder of Renaissance Technologies was a math prof at Stony Brook and they hired many other Stony Brook math PHDs. Every year also a surprisingly large chunk of the valedictorians/salutatorians from long island end up going to Stony Brook to study engineering or do a combined 7 year BA/MD.
if you're smart and organized, you'll have no issue getting into IB from binghamton. being 4 hours away from nyc is fine as you don't need to be in the city every weekend. just get into whatever banking/investing orgs are on campus
Think they send a kid or 2 to Moelis every year.
As noted above, it’s one of Moelis’ weird non-target targets alongside IU and BU.
Speaking of which, how good is Buffalo U? I’ve heard it’s not the greatest, but if you have any different perspectives I’d love to hear it
Lol not sure if troll / joke, but I meant Boston University.
Frankly, Buffalo is dog shit. Keep away lol
IU's relationship stems from a pipeline that was established while he was running UBS' IB. They sent a surprisingly large number of kids over there during the mid-2000s.
Interesting. Any color on where their relationship with BU comes from?
Went to Binghamton. It’s a good school that for its tuition price is a great value for education. I’d say there were a lot of benefits that I got out of it and it not being a commuter / city school helps you make good connections.
We are still firmly a non-target though. I will say that for anything outside of the business school, the job recruitment is really on you. The business school will have job fairs and bring as many companies in as possible but if you’re not in SOM then you’re not even allowed in. If you’re an econ major which i believe are the majority of the people that break into IB from Bing, there’s no structured IB process (at least when I was there that was the case) and you’re gonna have to hustle and network as much as you can.
Overall, good school, had a great experience, it really depends on what you’re looking to get out of it.
I was thinking of double majoring in both finance and economics, would the finance aspect have a more direct path?
Honestly, wouldn’t have much experience with that. I’d lean towards no just because I don’t think SOM really focuses on IB as much as other industries like accounting/general finance.
Are Binghampton and NYU the only schools you are between? If these are your only two options, go to Binghampton, get a 4.0 first semester and transfer to a semi target that'll throw some aid at you. Binghampton IB recruiting is almost nothing, even Rutgers is slightly better.
$300k in debt is too much
I have other schools I’m applying to and am hoping to get some scholarships from them, I’m just applying to all my schools early action and NYU only offers early decision. Other schools on my list are Babson, Fordham, Villanova, and Penn State. I also might add Baruch, but I don’t know if I qualify for the special discount bc I don’t live in the city itself, but more upstate.
Good plan. I would definitely add a few more reach schools/semi targets if you are really sure about IB, especially any known to be generous + common app ones where you would only be writing 0-2 (short) additional essays.
I went to Binghamton and am currently in IB.
Binghamton is a total non-target school.
Binghamton SOM mainly places students into the Big 4. Id say 50-60% of the graduating class goes into Big 4.
With that said, it is still possible to break into banking, you just need to be very pro-active.
If you go to Binghamton, the ONLY way to get into front office finance is getting involved in the finance society club your first semester freshman year. The finance society club is a typical finance club that hosts case competitions every semester. As a member of the finance society club you will have the OPPORTUNITY to interview for Binghamton’s investment fund (a student run fund that manages a few hundred thousand $$$). The fund is exclusive and has at most 30-40 students, all of which place into front office finance whether it be Banking, S&T or Equity Research. Getting into the fund is pretty difficult - I was rejected twice and never got in.
There are other ways to break into banking post-graduation, which is the route I took. I spent 2 years at a Big 4 firm, networked my ass off, and got the exit.
Lmk of any questions
Exactly what this poster said. I graduated from Bing SOM 5 years ago and while it's a good school there was absolutely zero IB recruiting. The finance society leaders networked like hell and ended up at top BBs. Really had their shit together from day 1.
I'm did end up in IB as an associate after moving around a bit.
Have a few friends that went to Bing. You'll have a good time, you will save money, and if you work hard enough you can break into the industry fairly easily imo. Going to NYU won't guarantee anything either since you have to compete with a lot of people, but your chances will obviously be higher. At the end of the day the effort you put in will determine where you end up when everything is set and done.
Personally, I wouldn't spend a single cent on an undergraduate degree. Save that money!
Badminton University lmao
there's one frat there that places kids at BB/EBs forget the name but they always place a few kids every year from bing
Do you have any guesses on the name?
I went to Binghamton and I think there is a lot of incorrect or dated information here, so will share from my observations.
While Binghamton isn’t a “target-school” it has a pretty unique position for recruiting for front office roles given the proximity to the city and ability to network in New York. For some background, Binghamton has a wide range of students who attend given how inexpensive it is. In-state tuition is ~$3,500 semester (meaning you can pay for a lot of it with an job during the semester and summer job/internship savings). There are plenty of students there who are B+ students in high school, or even community college transfers, but there’s also a ton of students I met who were A+ students with 1500+ SAT scores, particularly in the School of Management. As you can imagine New York is a high cost area, so there were tons of students whose families made $150,000+ household incomes, which prevented them from qualifying for meaningful financial aid, but because of the cost of living around New York City, they weren’t able to afford the elite private or out-of-state public schools they were accepted into. Looking on Poets & Quants, the average SAT for SOM (1417) is similar to more sought after public business schools like UVA (1429), IU (1432), and Texas (1378). My only point is that it’s not like there are not any smart students in SOM.
With that as background, I’ll give my thoughts on recruiting from the school. At Binghamton, the front office jobs won’t fall into your lap like it seemed like they did at other places, but my opinion is that if you’re willing to work for it, almost all of the students who actually want a front office job in NYC get it. The best resource available to students is the Finance Society http://bingfinance.org, which I think is similar to IBW at Indiana. The Finance Society hosts the Raymond James M&A Competition and the Barclays Equity Research Competition. The club also runs the BUIF which is the student managed investment fund. Additionally, they do an intensive recruiting boot camp for ~20 sophomores each Spring, split between IB and markets, to prepare them for the upcoming recruiting cycle. The School also has a partnership with Jefferies for ~10 students each year to do a remote internship during a semester with one of the Equity Research teams for academic credits, which is also a great resume builder. Because of the training, and networking that the club facilitates, in my experience nearly all of the boot camp participants get front office jobs/internships each year.
If you’re a top student, you can pretty much get a job at any firm on the street as there is an alumni presence (to varying levels) everywhere. I don’t have the list of recent placements in front of me, but looking at the 6 members of the Executive Board of the club this year from that website, I see Moelis x2, Morgan Stanley x2, Lazard, and Barclays. Again, I’d say ~20 students participate in the boot camps each year and almost everyone landed a front office role at a BB or EB. Those that didn’t land there ended up at great middle markets, mainly Jefferies, Guggenheim, or RBC on the middle market end, given that’s the strongest alumni base amongst MMs. I’m not sure if 15-20 students placed into front office roles in NYC each year is a lot or a little, but my view is that it’s virtually everyone who wants those jobs. The majority of SOM students go the Big 4/accounting route because they don’t want banking, not because they couldn’t get it. For reference, however, if you’re not involved in the Finance Society, recruiting from Binghamton is much more difficult and I’m not sure how one would even go about it.
If you’re the type of student who got into great schools and already knows they want IB, I think you could land it no matter where you went to school.
Good luck!
TLDR: borrowing $300,000 for undergrad when you could get the same job from a school that won’t require any loans would make me sick to my stomach.
This hit on every aspect of the school
My understanding is Bing is one of the top SUNY schools, so anyone going in-state is going to choose this over something like Albany or Buffalo. Is this still correct?
People might have personal reasons for preferring Albany or Buffalo but as someone who went to high school in New York -- Binghamton was regarded as far superior to those two.
Trying to compare prestige of SUNY schools is like comparing prestige of community colleges: no one cares
Only thing I’m going to critique you on here is SUNY tuition instate is not $3500 I’m state anymore… lol
Currently a freshman at Binghamton, I'd say it is what you make of it. SOM is small compared to the other colleges and a majority of the kids interested in finance attend the finance society meetings as well as do the case competitions (myself included). The networking opportunities are great since almost every grad pushes for more bing representation in their respective firms, as well as speakers coming in to share their experiences. I entered with the intention of reapplying but so far the school has shown nothing but opportunity for breaking into the industry.
I know of Bing students who made it into ib, but their biz school (SOM) is heavily tailored towards Big 4 Accounting. It’s a solid school but doesn’t fare better than Baruch or Fordham in terms or ib placement
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Think long term, the school might do well for placement regionally in NY but outside of that, you might get passed up for roles. Not telling you to go into debt unnecessarily but brand recognition is a very real thing in finance. You never want to have to explain where your school is or anything like that, trust me it's embarrassing.
I graduated from Binghamton a few years ago. I've summarized my career journey below which hopefully helps some people out in their decision making process.
1) Graduated high school in the aftermath of 2008. Had an "ok" GPA, a shit ton of AP credits and a pretty high SAT score.
2) During my freshman year in college I roomed with a 15 year old genius and my 2 suitemates were a kid from upstate with a perfect GPA and a near perfect SAT score and a kid from Long Island. The kid from upstate was accepted to a couple of Ivies but ended up not opting to take on a lot of debt like OP. I've met very many other students in Bing that fit the same description of being accepted to Ivies but coming from middle class backgrounds and being unable to afford to attend without taking on obscene amounts of debt. I'm not sure if this is a function of the economy or if it is a function of the size of the freshman class, but at the time of my admission, the admission rate was about 10% lower than it is today and entrance metrics were a tad higher. Ironically, both of my suite mates ended up flunking out despite being incredibly smart and talented.
3) I ended up graduating with a "pretty good" GPA after 3 years due to the amount of AP credits that I had coming in. During my time at Bing, I also TAed an Economics class and did 3 semesters of research. About 8 of my Econ students (out of about 60) ended up going into IB which I found to be a pretty crazy figure.
4) Due to my research, grades and strong professor recs, I got into a Master's program at a Target school.
5) After graduation, I got a job at a finance company where I've been for over 5 years.
In terms of recruiting, I think that what most people portrayed it correctly. During my time at Bing, there were very few IBs recruiting and many of them specifically targeted SOM students. The lack of recruiting from IBs was very apparent when I started attending a target school for my Masters. The amount of recruiting and effort that IBs put into recruiting at my target school was immense with a seemingly endless amount of happy hours and recruitment drives.
Based on my experience, I would recommend not going $300k into debt and opting for a school like Binghamton. If you work hard and network harder, there shouldn't be a reason why you can't land an IB job out of college. You could also follow my route and get a Masters at a target school which is also a much cheaper route.
Apply to Cornell for one of their schools with in-state tuition. If you don't end up getting in, they may offer you a guarantee transfer, if so, go to Binghamton for a year then transfer
Second this, I transferred into Cornell (not from Binghamton) and there must have been 50+ kids that took this path my year. Dyson (the undergrad business program at Cornell) qualifies for the lower in-state tuition
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