They’re both excellent schools. They both have more opportunities on offer than any one student can take advantage of. Most likely, the differences in outcome will be more about what you put into it than about either school putting any limits on your potential.
If you go to Rochester because you feel like you should - and end up having a negative attitude about the inevitable stresses of adjusting to life on campus in a new place - there is a risk that your own mindset will cancel out any built-in advantage that Rochester provides. You need to ask yourself whether you can commit wholeheartedly to the experience and thrive in that setting, such that you can take advantage of the opportunities, or whether the energy you might have put into pursuing your passions will instead be re-channeled into coping with a situation you’re ambivalent about.
Conversely, if you commute to SB, there’s the risk that not being forced to immerse yourself in the college experience 24/7 will tip your choices toward spending time at home rather than making the effort to maximize the time you spend on campus and get the absolute most out of it that you can.
Imagine the range of scenarios for each - which certainly overlap in terms of quality of outcome - and try to be clear-eyed about how you are likely to perform in each situation. You know yourself better than anyone here possibly could. SB is less “elite” than Rochester, but it’s not in a whole different universe of reputation. Go where can thrive.
That said… if you give Rochester a chance and end up deciding that it’s not right for you, there will almost certainly be the option to transfer back to Stony Brook as long as you keep your grades up at URoch. It is much less of a sure bet that you would have a second chance at URoch that would be as financially advantageous as the one on offer right now. And the differences in things like class size will be most stark in the first year. So a reasonable argument could be made to give Rochester a chance, and embrace the growth experience of going away to college for at least the first year or two, knowing that home and SB will be there if the Rochester experience doesn’t win you over after you’ve truly given it a fair chance. (BUT, if you decide on UR based on this rationale, do not allow yourself to debate the transfer possibility constantly in your mind, or worse yet bring it up it constantly with your friends. Determine when the decision point(s) would be, table it until that time, and commit fully to the experience in the meantime.) Once you’ve had the chance to get out of your comfort zone, and reinvent yourself among people who didn’t know you in high school, you will surely know whether going back to the more familiar setting of home and SB is something you want, or something you’ve outgrown.
BUT, if you decide that this isn’t the way in which you want to stretch yourself, go to Stony Brook and make a conscious effort to choose other ways to stretch and challenge yourself. Make the extra effort to put yourself on radar with your professors and get involved in research. Be proactive about making study abroad plans, for example, or utilize the National Student Exchange www.nse.org , in which SB participates, to plan a domestic exchange semester in another part of the country. There’s no wrong decision here, as long as you make the most of whichever path you choose.