State University of New York at Binghamton

The State University of New York at Binghamton in Vestal, New York, is one of the two flagship public universities in New York, and a 3-hour drive from both Philadelphia and New York City. It was founded in 1946 as Triple Cities College to support veterans returning from World War II. After a move and a couple of name changes, it’s now commonly referred to as Binghamton University. In 2025, US News and World Report rated it #4 Best Value Public University in the Nation based on academic quality and access to aid. Let’s find out why.

Binghamton is an R1 research institution granting bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in its College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Management, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, college of Community and Public Affairs, and School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences – their newest school, which opened in 2017, and doesn’t have an undergraduate program. All but the Nursing and Pharmacy Schools offer many 4+1 master’s degrees.

There are about 18,000 students here, and about 14,000 of them are undergraduates.

Here are some fun facts about SUNY Binghamton: the Nobel laureate who invented the lithium-ion battery is a chemistry professor here. And the First-year Research Immersion program allows freshman to dig into research from day one at Binghamton. On the recreation front, students can rent a bike for free for four hours. And there are bowling lanes in the student union. How cool is that?

90% of students come from in-state, and 10% from out-of-state. The gender split is 51% female/49% male, which is as close as you get to 50/50 these days! The campus feels huge with a lot of roads crossing through, and I would describe the architecture as functional. The in-state all-in price is about $31K which makes is a tremendous value for New York residents, given the world-class research, academic programs, and hundreds of clubs. At around $51K for out-of-state students, I think it would be a harder sell, which may explain why the out-of-state population is quite low.