For freshman Brady Ellicott, New York’s Binghamton University was her Goldilocks school—bigger than Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and smaller than Virginia Tech, two other finalists on her shortlist. She enrolled this past fall to pursue an interdisciplinary major in philosophy, politics and law, and as a North Salem, New York state resident, she’ll get her degree for $32,044 a year—$20,080 less than what out-of-staters must fork over, $29,970 less than what Virginia Tech would cost her and $50,156 less than private Lehigh.

“A lot of people get caught up saying ‘I want to go to this fancy school, I want to go to private schools,’ especially people in my town,” says 18-year-old Ellicott, who grew up in affluent Westchester County north of New York City. “At the end of the day, you just need a degree, and every school has things to do in that area and has unique traditions. But Binghamton is cheap, and it’s a really good education worth its price with so many opportunities.”

Binghamton is a gem in New York—and New Yorkers know it, but its renown doesn’t extend far past the east coast. “People can’t spell Binghamton—they think there’s a P,” Harvey Stenger, Binghamton’s president for the past 13 years, says with a laugh. But the university’s academic rigor rivals that of many other elite public universities. The median Binghamton student scores a 1430 on their SATs—within the 98th percentile—and higher than those at Ohio State, Rutgers and the University of Florida. Its graduates earn a median salary of $73,400 six years after graduating, and $136,600 10 years out. In April, Forbes named Binghamton one of the ten public New Ivies, alongside better-known powerhouses University of Michigan and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The university’s acceptance rate reflects a slow but growing awareness outside of New York of the school’s quality. For the academic year starting in 2023, 38% of applicants were accepted to the university, down from 43% a decade ago in 2015. Application volume has nearly doubled in that time, from around 35,000 applicants to over 57,000. While it may have been a safety school for Ivy League aspirants in the past, it is no longer, says Adam Nguyen, a long-time admissions consultant and founder of Ivy Link, an admissions consulting firm. “Binghamton’s growing selectivity—see its sub-40% acceptance rate and high median GPA and test scores—means it’s no longer an easy ‘backup’ for students,” says Nguyen. “I advise applicants to demonstrate academic excellence and fit with the university’s ethos. For students and families who value both academics and affordability, it’s certainly a school to consider seriously.” Most of Binghamton’s students—83%—come from within New York.

To add to its allure: Binghamton offers undergraduates four-plus-one or three-plus-one programs, which allows them to get their undergraduate degree and an accelerated, one-year masters within four or five years, depending on how many college level credits they earned in high school. Before launching the programs, 11% of Binghamton students came to campus with enough AP credits to cut down the time they spent in college. Ryan Calhoun, a senior at Binghamton studying mechanical engineering, will graduate with his bachelor’s degree this spring, after four years, but plans to stay for an additional year to get his masters in business administration. “I’m interested in getting into more managerial engineering positions further down the line, so I just want to set myself up for that. Also, if I have the right idea, maybe starting my own company one day,” Calhoun says. Ellicott also plans to complete the four-plus-one program, with a master’s in public administration. Motivated students can participate in the university’s three-semester First-year Research Immersion program, which allows freshmen to contribute to active research at the university in one of 12 topic areas, including clean energy, drug discovery and ecological genetics.

So why aren’t more American students clamoring to get a spot in Binghamton’s freshman class? Likely, they don’t know about it. New York, like California, doesn’t have a singular flagship university—there’s no comparable University of New York to a school like the University of North Carolina or the University of Virginia. Binghamton is one of 64 campuses in the State University of New York system, and one of four flagships, alongside SUNY Buffalo to the west, SUNY Albany to the north, and SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. Additionally, Binghamton doesn’t have a football team, and misses out on the free advertising that its rivals in Michigan, Georgia and Ohio receive via the Saturday college gamedays of kids’ childhoods. Asked why, Stenger says football isn’t a financial priority for the school.

Stenger, 67, is a New Yorker through and through. He grew up in Skaneateles, a small town about 30 minutes west of Syracuse. As an undergraduate, he attended Cornell University to study chemical engineering and then went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to get his PhD. There, he met his wife, Catherine Frankenbach, then an athletic trainer who taped Stenger’s ankles before his football and hockey games. The New York state Stenger remembers from his undergrad days was an industrial hub. “There were tons of industrial jobs across all of New York State in the auto industry, in the computer industry—IBM was initially headquartered in Binghamton, there were a lot of companies in Syracuse, Rochester was famous for Kodak,” he recalls. “When I got back, all the jobs seemed to have disappeared.”

His first plan at Binghamton in 2013 is still his mission today—a strategic plan called the Road Map to Premier, which prioritizes research excellence, maintaining a top-tier undergraduate experience, bringing in more international students and talent, and investing in physical spaces. Stenger already has evidence for success on this first goal—in 2018, the university was deemed an R1 school—a Carnegie Classification that reflects “very high research activity.” The next year, Stanley Whittingham, a longtime Binghamton professor, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work leading to the development of the lithium-ion battery. Stenger has been working to capitalize on Whittingham’s legacy. In 2023, SUNY Binghamton was designated a tech hub for American battery manufacturing and research by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. This title came with $260 million in federal grants for workforce training programs and manufacturing and safety improvements.

While SUNY Binghamton grows, so does the local economy. “When I got to Binghamton, I said … If I can grow the university and have an impact on the technologies that we generate, the startup companies, supporting local industries, I think I can have an impact on improving the economy in Binghamton,” says Stenger, referring to the fact that cities in upstate New York were devastated economically during deindustrialization that occurred starting in the 1980s. “So that’s been my side job,” says Stenger. The new manufacturing building for lithium-ion batteries is being built in an old newspaper building in Johnson City just across the Susquehanna River from campus.

Other business-friendly projects Stenger spearheaded include the construction of a start-up incubator in downtown Binghamton, which opened in 2017 and was funded with $19 million in state grants. The university has turned Johnson City into its health sciences campus, complete with a $50 million Decker College of Nursing building in one of the old Endicott Johnson shoe factories, and a $60 million school of pharmacy building nearby. Both of those academic programs and others, have active clinical internship and research opportunities thanks to the nearby hospital, the UHS Wilson Medical Center. UHS just completed a $150 million renovation that added a new trauma center, emergency department, an MRI suite, a surgical support area and a new roof-top helipad.

“I feel like if we hadn’t been there, that might not have happened,” says Stenger as he gets ready to retire at the end of this academic year. “But our job wasn’t to make those other things happen, it was just to create the opportunity.”