Stony Brook University

The State University of New York at Stony Brook, commonly referred to as Stony Brook University (SBU), is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's two flagship institutions. Its campus consists of 213 buildings on over 1,454 acres (588 hectares) of land in Suffolk County and it is the largest public university (by area) in the state of New York.

Opened 69 years ago in 1957 in Oyster Bay as the State University College on Long Island, the institution moved to Stony Brook in 1962. Stony Brook is part of the Association of American Universities and the Universities Research Association. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".

Stony Brook University, in partnership with Battelle, manages Brookhaven National Laboratory, a national laboratory of the United States Department of Energy. The university acquired land for a Research & Development Park adjacent to its main campus in 2004, and has four business incubators across the region. Stony Brook is the largest single-site employer on Long Island; over 25,500 students are enrolled at the university, which has over 15,000 employees and over 2,850 faculty.

Stony Brook is a member of the Coastal Athletic Association, and its intercollegiate athletic teams have competed at the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) since 1999.

History

Origins in Oyster Bay

The State University of New York at Stony Brook was established in Oyster Bay in 1957, as the State University College on Long Island (SUCOLI). Established almost a decade after the creation of New York's public higher education system, the institution was envisioned as a college for the preparation of secondary school teachers.

Leonard K. Olson was appointed as the first dean of the institution and was instrumental in the recruitment of faculty staff and planning of the later Stony Brook campus. SUCOLI opened with an inaugural class of 148 students, on the grounds of the William Robertson Coe Planting Fields estate. These first students were admitted on a tuition-free basis.

1961 was a year of firsts as 30 students were conferred degrees in the first commencement and the university was appointed its first president, John Francis Lee. Lee left later that year due to political and bureaucratic matters regarding the future of the university and the central administration at Albany. Nevertheless, he had fulfilled his primary task of reshaping the university from a technical science and engineering college of limited degree options to a full-scale university featuring liberal arts programs.

Move to Stony Brook

In 1960 the Heald Report, commissioned by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, recommended a major new public university be built on Long Island to "stand with the finest in the country," a report that would ultimately shape most of the university's growth for years to come.

Ward Melville, a philanthropist and businessman from the Three Village area in western Suffolk County donated over 400 acres (160 hectares) of land to the state for the development of a state university and in 1962 the institution relocated to Stony Brook and officially renamed as the State University of New York at Stony Brook. However, the longer name has fallen out of favor; since 2005, it has usually been called simply Stony Brook University (SBU).

The campus had 782 students enrolled in 1962, but enrollment had increased more than tenfold by 1969, surpassing the 8,000 mark, fueled by the large funding of public higher education in the Sputnik era. In 1963, only three years after the release of the Heald Report, the Governor commissioned the "Education of Health Professions" (Muir Report) report. The report outlined the need for expansion of the university system to prepare medical professionals for the future needs of the state. The report was particularly important for Stony Brook as it recommended creation of a Health Sciences Center and academic hospital at the campus to serve the need of the fastest-growing counties (Nassau and Suffolk) in New York at the time.

Campuses

Main campus

The main campus is in the area of the historic North Shore hamlet of Stony Brook near the geographic midpoint of Long Island, approximately 50 miles (80 km) east of Manhattan and 62 miles (100 km) west of Montauk. Bounded to the north by New York State Route 25A (North Country Road), the campus is subdivided into "West Campus" and "East Campus" by the thoroughfare County Road 97 (Nicolls Road). The Ashley Schiff Forest Preserve separates the South Campus from West Campus. The Long Island Rail Road serves the community with the Stony Brook station situated along the northern edge of the campus.

The Stony Brook University campus area is a census-designated place (CDP), with a population of 10,409 at the 2020 census. As of the 2020 census, the U.S. Census Bureau defines the Stony Brook University CDP as a census-designated place separate from the CDP of Stony Brook.

The municipality containing the university is Town of Brookhaven. The university is not located in a village.

West

The West Campus is the center of the academic life of the university. It houses the majority of academic, athletic, and undergraduate student housing facilities while also being the original site of the university.

The modern campus is centered around the Academic Mall, which stretches for more than a quarter of a mile from the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at the west end to the Administration Building at the east end. The Academic Mall includes the Student Activities Center, Frank Melville Jr. Memorial Library, Staller Center for the Arts, Humanities building, Psychology A & B, Harriman Hall, Frey Hall (previously known as Old Chemistry), the Earth and Space Sciences building, Math Tower, and Physics building.

The Engineering Quad is located near the Academic Mall, and contains the Engineering, Light Engineering, Heavy Engineering, and Computing Center facilities. The Javits Lecture Center, Social and Behavioral Sciences building, Computer Science building, New Computer Science building and Student Union facilities are also on the West Campus. The Life Sciences complex, also on the West Campus, consists of the Life Sciences building, Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Centers for Molecular Medicine, Bioengineering building, and the Institute for Advanced Computational Science.

Among the latest additions to the campus are the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, the new Walter J. Hawrys Campus Recreation Center, the Hilton Garden Inn hotel, Frey Hall, and a new Computer Science building. The Staller Center, which contains the largest movie screen in Suffolk County on Long Island, holds the annual Stony Brook Film Festival.

Organization and administration

The Stony Brook University consists of a main campus in Stony Brook, and additional satellite campuses in Southampton, New York, and South Korea. The university is composed of 12 schools and colleges. By enrollment, the largest college or school is the College of Arts and Sciences.

The university is governed by the State University of New York board of trustees, a body of 18 members, which regulate all the individual units of the SUNY system. The trustees have the authority to appoint the president of each state-operated institution; grant all degree diplomas and certificates for the completion of studies at any state-operated campus; and regulate admissions, tuition, curricula, and all other matters pertaining to the operation and administration of each state-operated campus. The president of Stony Brook is the principal executive officer of the university. The position was first held by John Francis Lee and is held by the seventh president in the institution's history, Andrea Goldsmith, who took office on August 1, 2025.

Endowment

Stony Brook's financial endowment is managed by the Stony Brook Foundation. The foundation was established in 1965 as a not-for-profit corporation under the New York State Education Law, chartered to collect and manage gifts from private and non-state resources to supplement the funding of the university and managed by a voluntary board of trustees. Donations can be made to a wide selection of funds which benefit different areas of the university.

In 2012, the endowment was valued at approximately $125 million with total assets amounting to nearly $350 million and has fully recovered from the losses endured in the 2008 economic downturn. After a strong fundraising campaign led by Jim Simon's $150 million donation, the university's fundraising amounted to more than $180 million for the 2011–12 year and raised $200 million by March 2013. It is the second largest endowment among State University of New York university centers behind the University at Buffalo. However, the university's endowment remains far below the average of its Association of American Universities peers.

On June 1, 2023, the Simons Foundation announced a historic $500 million endowment gift, making it the largest unrestricted donation to an institution of higher education in U.S. history.

Student government

Housed in the Student Activities Center, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) is the governing body representing the undergraduate students of the university. The main functions of USG involve regulation, funding, and recognizing official clubs and organizations of the university. Undergraduate students are obligated to pay a Student Activity Fee per semester which is then administered by the Undergraduate Student Government. USG manages the yearly Homecoming events, Roth Pond Regatta and the traditional end-of-the year Brookfest concert and a series of concerts and events branded as "Stony Brook Concerts" that occur throughout the academic year while also directly funding undergraduate organizations, clubs, and other student services. USG at Stony Brook has a long history going back to the founding of the Student Polity Association (Polity) in 1959. After the controversial de-certification of Polity by the administration in 2002, USG was founded in 2003.

Academics

Stony Brook was one of ten national universities awarded a National Science Foundation recognition award in 1998 for their integration of research and education. Between 2005 and 2007, two Nobel Prizes were awarded to professors for their work conducted at Stony Brook. The university has an annual $4.65 billion economic impact on the region. Stony Brook co-manages Brookhaven National Laboratory through Brookhaven Science Associates, a 50-50 partnership with Battelle Memorial Institute. Stony Brook is also one of two public schools in New York to have a medical school and a dental school, the other being University at Buffalo.

The university's health science and medical component, collectively referred to as Stony Brook Medicine, includes the Renaissance School of Medicine and the Schools of Dental Medicine, Nursing, Health Professions, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Social Welfare, as well as the Hospital, major centers and institutes, programs, clinics and community-based healthcare settings, and the Long Island State Veterans Home.

Tuition

For the 2021–22 academic year, annual undergraduate tuition and fees was $10,410 for in-state students and $28,080 for out-of-state students. Tuition alone cost $7,070 and $24,740, respectively, with $3,020 in fees. Average room and board cost is $14,884.

78% of full-time enrolled freshmen received financial aid, with an average of $13,100 per student. 71% of full-time enrolled freshmen received a scholarship or aid from a federal or state government institution. 42% of full-time enrolled freshmen received loan aid from the federal government at an average of $5,000 per student.

Undergraduate admissions

Admission to Stony Brook University is classified as "more selective" by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The Princeton Review gives Stony Brook an "Admissions Selectivity Rating" of 93.

In 2023, the university received 50,341 applications. It extended offers of admission to 24,670 applicants, or 49%, after holistic review that includes examination of academic rigor, performance and admissions test scores. 3,569 accepted students chose to enroll, a yield rate of 14.5%.

Stony Brook does not require applicants to submit a standardized test score. Of the 36% of incoming students in 2023 who submitted SAT scores, the interquartile range for math and reading was 680–770 and 640–720 respectively. Of the 3% of incoming students in 2023 who submitted ACT scores, the interquartile range was 28–33. Of all matriculating students, the average high school GPA is 93.52 on a 100-point scale.

Student life

Stony Brook has a wide variety of student-run organizations on campus, which include sororities and fraternities, and a count of almost 300 recognized student clubs and organizations. The Undergraduate Student Government at Stony Brook University is trusted with the responsibility of budgeting the undergraduate student activity fee which funds most student run organizations on campus. The Graduate Student Organization is responsible for budgeting the graduate student activity fee, and supplies a variety of funding opportunities, programming, student services, and funding for departmental and student organizations.

The oldest campus newspaper is The Statesman, which was founded in 1957 when the university was in Oyster Bay. Other publications include the Stony Brook Press, Stony Brook Independent, Blackworld, and the Asian American E-Zine. Stony Brook also has a campus-wide public radio station, WUSB, which serves most of Long Island and dedicates programming to Stony Brook athletics and other events on campus.

Stony Brook once had a reputation as a commuter school, though in 2024, more than half of its undergraduates live on campus, as do a quarter of its graduate students. Around 83% of freshmen students are on-campus residents. Other schools have since adopted similar practices to increase residential numbers.

Student body

In fall 2021, the university had an enrollment of 26,782 students: 18,010 undergraduate students and 8,772 graduate students.

Of all students, 23,072 (86 percent) are U.S. citizens or permanent residents representing all states of the United States and 3,536 (13 percent) are international students representing over a hundred countries around the world.

21,103 students hail from New York state, accounting for 79 percent of the student body. 12,061 students (45 percent) of the student body reside in Nassau or Suffolk County on Long Island, while 6,766 students (25 percent) reside in New York City.

2,276 students (8.5 percent) reside north of New York City, with Westchester County, Rockland County and Orange County as the three most common. 7.3 percent of students live out of state, most represented by New Jersey, California and Connecticut.

Half of Stony Brook's international students hail from China. An additional 18% come from India and 10% from South Korea. In 2021, there were more Asian American undergraduate students than White American students attending Stony Brook for the first time in the university's history.

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