Binghamton is known for its strong academics, and in my opinion it lives up to that reputation -- the students here are smart, and everyone knows you need to work really hard to get good grades. Most people study more or less every day, and the library can get pretty crowded. For me personally, I probably study or do schoolwork outside of class for maybe five or six hours on an average weekday.
I honestly think the fear of big classes is overblown; some of the intro classes get to 100 or more, but I'm a second-semester freshman and only two of the ten classes I'm taking here have been that large (one other class had around 95; two have had 40ish; and the other five have had 20 or fewer). And for each of those two classes, the professor knows who I am because I went to office hours; it really is that simple.
There are also plenty of opportunities to meet profs outside the classroom, like faculty lunches, where professors all get lunch in the dining hall and wait for undergrads to come start conversations with them, and on-campus events relevant to the professor's field (e.g. my Italian professor was at the Italian club's Christmas celebration, my friend's Greek professor came to the screening of a movie related to the classics). Sometimes I feel like these opportunities are underutilized by the students, but it really depends -- there's always a line of students waiting to see my (awesome!) sociology professor.
The thing that makes the biggest difference in your academic life at Binghamton is what you do outside of class. If you go to class, do your homework, and stop there, then you'll learn a lot and get a good education, but it won't be as awesome as it could be. Forming relationships with your professors makes a huge difference, no matter how you're doing in the class. For example, I was struggling with some of the concepts in my logic class, so I went to the professor's office hours. Getting this one-on-one attention cleared everything up completely -- it was so, so helpful. On the other hand, I understood what we were learning in my women's history class, but I was curious as to how it related to some material not covered by the course, so I went to talk to the professor, and she really enriched my understanding of the history. I also talked to her whenever I happened to read something in a newspaper or magazine that related to what we were studying in class, and when I came up with a new perspective on one of the course's major concepts -- it was great to be able to have this intellectual dialogue, not for points on my transcript, but just to learn. (For what it's worth, by the way, my logic class has about 150 students and women's history had about 95; the size of the class really won't get in your way.) Also, Binghamton has a ton of films and presentations (on everything from medieval art to Midwestern archaeology to the association between mammals and parasites) going on all the time, and they're well-advertised around campus. If you're interested, there are tons of opportunities to learn.