I’ll try to go into what I think the “some reasons” are, briefly.
- It's Buffalo. The city itself does not have a great reputation, it's known as one of those booming cities from the industrial and canal shipping days, that has been dying a slow death for decades since that all went away. I've never been there, but people I talk to that have say "Buffalo is a dreary, sad place". I've watched some videos recently that make me think that the city is on the rebound, and better than many fear.
- The distance. It's far from everything, and unlike driving down to Delaware or Maryland or even North Carolina, there is large gaps of nothing on most of the trip up there. For us, we go through Newburgh, then Binghamton, then to Buffalo with hours of empty in between. Alternately, a slightly slower route is Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, but again, hours of nothingness in between. The drive for us would be 6.5 hours, but, given how long that is you are likely to stop for gas, a meal, bathroom breaks, and it can easily become 7-8 hours. That's essentially a day, each way, which is the reason we never got a chance to visit. We had looked at Clark, Umass, Binghamton, Delaware, and all of these were close enough where we could visit in a day or two, but Buffalo would have meant leaving on a day and spending that entire day driving, then visiting rather quickly, to be able to spend that next entire day driving back. Either that, or you need 3 days to be able to spend a day.
- The weather: Whether (no pun intended) it's accurate or not, Buffalo is portrayed as a freezing cold, always snowing place. Being from CT, we aren't that worried about that, but it did play in. This is something the country as a whole is dealing with right now. 50 years ago, weather was not as much of a prime mover as it is now. People are leaving the colder areas in large amounts to head toward warmer states (and colleges).
I still thought Buffalo looked like an excellent school, and because of the above, I actually thought there’s a chance it may have a better group of kids there (people who aren’t going just for the weather, or the super cool nightlife, or the proximity to big hubs). I still think most of the kids who go there are kids who are from upstate NY … but for those who aren’t, they would have to be going for the better reasons.
Will certainly look at it for the next two kids. They were also extremely competitive on the merit award, which was very nice.