Out of State Students

hudsonvalley51
Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:01:56 +0000

Dutch – I would agree with you that the lack of an OOS student population has no bearing on the academic standing of the school. My argument had more to do with “quality of life” issues on campus. I do believe that the SUNY’s in general would be better places to study and spend 4 years of one’s life in if a few more OOS and international students were competing for slots in the respective freshmen classes. As a NYS resident for the past 38 years I won’t deny that NY has a diverse population, particulary in the NYC environs. I’ve lived in NYC and western NY as well as in the Hudson Valley and, yes, there are some distinct cultural differences that evidence themselves in the often-noted Upstate-Downstate divide.

As diverse as New Yorkers think their state is, however, we are also quite parochial. I can’t begin to tell you how many times my D’s friends and parents of her friends have reacted with incredulity that she is looking at colleges out-of-state, particularly in the “religious wacko South” and the “mind-numbingly dull” Midwest. (Conversely, we’ve hosted otherwise bright and rational high schoolers from the west coast who were shocked to find that our Upstae village was not a stop on the IRT and that we didn’t have a bodega on every corner). Over the past (Fill-in-the-blank) years the country has been coalescing around a common culture driven by advances in communications and the mass media. Regionalism is still a fact of life, however, and I believe the college years are a great time for kids from diffrerent parts of the country to learn about and understand those regional differences.