 Before the IACAC conference, Binghamton wasn't really even on my radar, but I think you might want to put it on yours. Binghamton is located in southeast New York state. It's actually the number one public university in the state of New York. It does technically belong to the SUNY, the State University of New York system. But don't tell Binghamton that because they brand themselves as Binghamton. They have their own sort of identity. And if you take a look at like a campus map, it's kind of cool. They call this the brain because the main road that goes around the campus is shaped like a brain and like, here's the stem. Inside the brain are all of the academic facilities. Meanwhile, on the outside of the brain, you've got all these residential areas that are interconnected. So there's a bunch of different living communities, right? These colleges like the College of the Woods. So let's get a closer look at that campus. This is super cool. So there are four greenhouses here with each with like a distinct climate. Pretty good way to get your hands on experiences. So yeah, I love the way the campus is organized with these little residential areas kind of around the side, like on the other side of the main road and then all the academic stuff right in the middle. I wanted to learn a little bit more about the university and its programs, what it has to offer. So we're going to talk to Mikaela Ridley from the admissions office right now. Let's go see her. Hi, my name is Mikaela Ridley. I use she and her pronouns. I'm of our assistant directors here in undergraduate admissions. I personally am the liaison to our Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences. So that's certainly one of my favorite programs on campus is our undergraduate nursing program. It's a direct entry nursing program and we have a state of the art facility, our innovative simulation and practice center, so that when they're actually going and doing their hundreds of hours of clinical work in the field, they're really well prepared. Now, I know a lot of people go into the sciences because they want to study something like biology and then proceed to a medical career, maybe become a doctor, you know, like these girls. I'm Dominic, I'm a bio major for pre-med. I'm M and I'm doing the same thing, bio pre-med. And if you want to check out those interviews in full, check out the video that's coming out next week because I'm going to talk to a whole bunch of Binghamton students and let them share their experiences with you. But when it comes to international students, I got to give you a piece of advice. Don't think about becoming a doctor in the United States. It's going to cost you so much money. The main reason it's possible for U.S. nationals is because they can get financial aid and they pay in-state tuition and they can lower the cost of getting those first few degrees that it takes to become a doctor. But there is a really good alternative and that's nursing. I tell people all the time, there's no shame in being a nurse. They make really good money in the United States and nursing programs, especially the one here at Binghamton, are excellent in the U.S. There is a huge shortage of nurses. There was already, oh, we have a shortage of healthcare workers and especially of nurses and physical therapists and physicians assistants and occupational therapists. And then when COVID happened, that really exacerbated the, yeah, we need a lot more of these nurses. And the nice thing is not only have that resulted in nursing programs growing in size slightly and getting more nurses out there, it's also increased the salaries for nursing. Our school of management tends to be one of the schools that we are really well known for. That houses our business administration program and our accounting program. Our Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science is home to our engineering programs as well as our computer science programs. In all of our majors, we focus on hands-on learning. We don't want our students to graduate with just a degree that says that they sat in the classroom and learned something. Now the RIT guys told me that the Binghamton boys are kind of like bros that like to party a lot. But the more I talk to people here and the more I listen to Mikayla talk about the admission requirements here, I think they're exaggerating a little bit. Maybe they're just really extreme nerds. Binghamton typically admits students with a very high GPA, like students that have an A average. So we're looking like 3.7, 3.8. They also have a typical SAT score of around 1300. So it's not like they're just letting anybody in here with a 40% acceptance rate. It is a pretty selective university. So you don't have to be the best in the world to get in here. But you are going to have to show up and have a pretty strong profile. You're also going to want to have some strong legs because man, there's a lot of walking and there's a lot of hills. I'm going to work out today. We do get about 40,000 applications a year. So we have early action. Students apply for early action by November 1st and they hear back from us by January 15th. And then January 15th is our regular decision and we'll hear back from us by April 1st. The thing that I love about Binghamton is we have created this very unique academic balance here, where Binghamton is a rigorous R1 research university, but it's not this cutthroat competitive environment. Once you're here, we want you to succeed. There's just this very welcoming feeling. It's a very down to earth campus and that's something that I just love about the experience that our students have here. So I just got done talking to Michaela Ridley at the Admission Center. One of the things that stood out to me the most, I think, was just how transfer friendly this school is. I don't think I've run across another university that does so much for transfer students. It makes it so easy for them to get in here. So about 25% of the students on this campus are transfer students, which is a huge number. And transfer students are eligible for all the same awards and scholarships and financial aid as everybody else. So it's not like other universities where sometimes transfers don't get as much or some scholarships are only available to first year students, not here at Binghamton. All right, so we got to talk about cost. OK, so as a public university, you as an international student can't get financial aid based on your need. The sticker price for international students and out of state students is similar. It's about $43, $45,000. But you got to remember that there are merit based scholarships at the university. So Michaela was explaining to me that you could get up to about $15,000 if you have a really outstanding academic profile. And that'll bring that total cost of attendance down to around $30,000 if you're an international student. If you can get your cost of attendance down to $30,000, you're in a really good position. The thing is, it only gets better because year after year, people donate to Binghamton and they want that money to be used to keep people in Binghamton. They start giving you more scholarships as the years go on. So if you meet certain requirements or you're in a certain faculty, you might have to do an application. It might be automatic, but you can get your cost reduced even more. Binghamton has surprised me. When I hear state university, public university, I assume it's going to be decent. Especially in a state like New York that puts a lot of money into education, but I didn't think it would be this pretty. I didn't think I would see this much nature on campus. I didn't think I would see this many modern buildings with really cool architecture and these complete facilities. I am pleasantly surprised. Now that I have been here, I can confidently say I would be happy if we went to the school. From what I can see, you've got a really nice community with a lot of fun people. You've got a ton of nature, you've got great facilities and a reasonable cost of attendance. So I don't see a lot of problems. If you're interested in applying here, they got the Common App or you can use the SUNY application, which is for all the state universities of New York. And if you need some help preparing your application, you can hit us up at preposcore.com or leave a comment below if you've got any questions. I always feel like, you know, if they treat me well, that means they're going to treat you really well because I'm not paying them anything, all right? You're the student. You're the one that's going to pay the university money. Their job is to take care of you. I'm just some random dude who shows up with a camera. So if they're treating me nice, you're going to have it good. And I was taking very good care of today. So thank you to everybody at Binghamton. Thank you for watching. I will see you next week.