WARNING: For prospective Students

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stony Brook University - SUNY
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<p>800? Jeez. I thought part of the reason they tweaked the Bio sequence was to make those classes smaller. Thanks for the info.</p>

<p>It's hard, though, when Bio's our largest major (it passed Psych this year, I believe), to keep class sizes down. Ultimately, we're not the only school that offers large lectures; if you think Cornell or Hofstra or any other big research university is offering all their classes at thirty students or less, you're wrong.</p>

<p>Actually, we have stopped admitting "so many students"; our freshman class this fall will be the same size as last year's (2700), not the increase we had originally intended.</p>

<p>-Chris</p>

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<p>Yeah, I'm guessing the restructuring is responsible for a temporary upswing in intro course enrollment--especially for 201, which in the past many bio majors left until senior year, because if you're not interested in evolution and ecology (or think you're not--I left it until late, which turned out to be a mistake because that department is full of cool profs!), it's not a prereq for much. </p>

<p>So right now you've got seniors finishing up the old sequence, sophomores who took 150 last year moving ahead with the new sequence but delayed a year, and freshmen who are eligible for the first time for the 200 level courses all flooding enrollment. Not to mention the demand for more seats was probably always there, but while the lab was attached to the lecture there was a sticter limit on enrollment because of lab space. I think now it will become much more common for people to knock out all of 201, 202, 203, 204, and 205 freshman and soph years, and once the bio department gets a better idea of what the enrollment patterns for the new course sequence are, they'll plan accordingly with more sections.</p>

<p>In the end, there's not a significant difference in how a big class of 200 feels and how a big class of 600 feels. They're both big--600 sounds a lot more intimidating, but it's not really much different in terms of how the course is run, and you'll find 200 person lectures pretty much everywhere, even at small LACs. At least here they have enough practice administering large courses that everything usually goes really smoothly.</p>

<p>When you talk about largest major, are you talking about among incoming students or graduates? I remember reading that Bio's been the biggest major among freshmen for years, but ends up surpassed by Psych when graduation comes around. Is that the stat that's changed?</p>

<p>And hooray for not increasing the freshman class size!</p>

23

<p>All campuses have people that are disappointed with their school, that's true I guess....but Stony Brook has the image of being such a crappy school because the students who hate Stony voice their opinions MUCH MORE than other schools. That makes me think Stony's so bad that the students who dislike it have a need to throw their opinions out there. Either that or Stony's students are attention seekers. Whatever. It also seems as though the number of people who complain about Stony is larger than a lot of other schools. Not saying I know the exact figures, just seems like that to me. Also, many people who defend Stony Brook say: "You've only been talking to the few people who hate Stony, you need to hear how other people feel. The vast majority of our student body is NOT disappointed or sad." Or something like that. Yes, I would agree with that.....but hm....it seems as though those "few people who hate Stony" are everywhere! Maybe the people should go out looking for these people who had such a positive experience at Stony.....I think they'll end up finding more people who've had negative experiences than positive. </p>

<p>Also, using the fact that 90% of the freshman returned this year doesn't really say much in my opinion. I don't think that all 90% of the freshman returned because they were so damn happy at Stony. Then again, we don't know if a majority of that 90% were happy or not unless there was a poll taken that I didn't find. Just saying that this doesn't help or hurt anyone's argument.</p>

<p>I also think that Stony is NOT selective AT ALL in its admissions process. This could be due to the fact that I have a very high standard when it comes to universities. Don't really know. I personally applied to Stony as a last resort, and I honestly expected to get in 100%. I'm seriously not trying to sound arrogant or anything. I'm not a genius, I'm not a straight A student.
I'm not quite sure about other high schools, but in my high school Stony was seen as a pretty crappy school. I'm talking about the academics here. Yeah sure Stony, like any other school has some smart people. But I think it also has A LOT of mediocre students. Don't know if this is actually true, but I think that this is also present in a lot of other high schools. So people all just apply to Stony for the hell of it. This all explains the large volume of applications, and the large amount of people accepted that Stony Brook fanatics keep boasting about. A lot of other schools have about the same number of applicants (in some cases more) than Stony, but accept such a small number of applicants, hence making them high selective. Many of the top undergraduate schools in america have almost 1/5 of the undergraduate population of Stony.
So for the people saying "Stony isn't bad. The fact that we have such a large number of people to the point where we had to triple many freshman is proof of that!"....this argument doesn't work. Stony let's in too many people. So I honestly think it's Stony's fault. Many other schools have tripled too, yes I know that. However, I've visited a lot of campuses, and recently I've gone over some of my friends' dorms in the other schools. Their triples, looked like they were actually made to accomodate three people. Here, they convert doubles into triples by adding a bunk bed. Pretty bad accomodations.</p>

<p>And before anyone tries to nail me for not being a Stony student, I am. I'm also not one of those people who hate Stony. I think it's decent here and made many new friends. When speaking to them however, I've heard these 3 words a myriad of times: "Stony Brook sucks."
So yeah, for me, I'd say a majority, and if not a majority, a large PERCENTAGE of the student population is unhappy here. I'm basing this on the many conversations I've had with a lot of my friends, and older people who have gone to Stony and graduated.
Even though I'm one of the Stony students who doesn't think it's so bad here, I'm arguing against the pro-Stony people because I just think their arguments are wrong.</p>

<p>Btw, I thought Chris was working with the admissions comittee. Not working for the Stony promo team or something. Oh well, w/e. I'm obviously going to get a lot of people hating me for writing what I've written. I really don't care seeing as how I'm probably never going to view this page again. All I'm trying to say is, on the face of it, it looks as though Stony Brook sucks. Guess what, the general population is going to go with what they see on the face of it.</p>

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<p>haphazard - I'm learning a lot from this thread; thanks for sharing your story. It's great when students post their honest opinions on CC.</p>

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<p>stay away from stony brook if you can!!</p>

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<p>Haphazard actually makes a lot of good points; we certainly do have a very vocal population of students who are disgruntled for some reason or another.</p>

<p>However:

[quote]
I also think that Stony is NOT selective AT ALL in its admissions process. This could be due to the fact that I have a very high standard when it comes to universities. Don't really know. I personally applied to Stony as a last resort, and I honestly expected to get in 100%.

[/quote]

That's patently false. Regardless of your standard, our selectivity is probably third now among SUNY campuses (Geneseo and Binghamton have better numbers than we do). Regardless of why students apply, the fact is, we only admitted 43% of them last year; that was because for one reason or another, about 57% of them did not meet our admissions criteria.</p>

<p>And of course some of the top undergraduate schools in the country have 1/5 the population of Stony Brook! Some of them have twice or three times as many. Don't compare us with a private liberal arts college in the midwest who enrolls 1,000 students; of course we're different. That's a silly comparison. Compare us with similar schools; UConn, Albany, Hofstra, NYU, CW Post -- schools with which we see a lot of overlap. And you'll see that schools that are similar to us have a lot of the same problems that we have.</p>

<p>Yes, I'm on the admissions committee; and yes, I'm positive about Stony Brook, because I think we have great things to offer students. But we can't be -- and won't be -- everything to everyone. If you're going to be an elitist, you're going to be disappointed here, because that's not what we are, and not what we're trying to be.</p>

<p>Chris</p>

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<p>i think stony brook is a great university. there are colorful rocks on campus haha.</p>

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<p>Chris -- When you talk about selectivity what criteria are you using. Stony Brook probably has the highest mean standardized test scores and GPA except for Geneseo and Binghamton but as far as acceptance rates I think New Paltz, the Fashion Institute of Technology. Purchase and maybe a couple others (aside from Geneseo and Binghamton) have Stony Brook beat. In that sense those schools may be said to be more "selective." But as far as caliber of student admitted I think you are on safe grounds.</p>

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<p>The rocks are, indeed, quite colorful. :)</p>

<p>I always forget about FIT; they're so specialized that they get lost in the discussion a lot. New Paltz has come a long way in the last couple of years, so you're right, they're right with us too.</p>

<p>-Chris</p>

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<p>Purchase, New Paltz, and FIT are DEFINETLY not more highly regarded as compared to Stony Brook.</p>

<p>SB is in a different league than Purchase, New Paltz...as for FIT, why would you even compare? Are you just looking at % accepted? Could be that there are more low caliber students applying there.</p>

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<p>Entity...I DID NOT say that Purchase, FIT and New Paltz were "more highly regarded." </p>

<p>I said that one measure of selectivity is the acceptance rate. Using this sole criteria FIT, Purchase and New Paltz -- in 2005 at least -- offered admitted to a lower percentage of students than did Stony Brook. </p>

<p>I would certainly agree that Stony Brook is generally "more highly regarded" in the various college rankings than the other three. That, of course, does not mean that New Paltz, for example, shouldn't be more highly regarded by an individual student for whom NP is a better fit that SBU.</p>