College Guide: Understanding SUNY schools

It’s Week 3 of our eight-week Essential Guide to College in New York newsletter course that teaches families what they need to know about the college search.

This week, it’s all about SUNY.

With affordability on nearly everyone’s mind, the State University of New York is attracting a lot more attention these days. Its tuition tops out at $7,070 a year for in-state students, roughly half the national average for public universities, and 1/10 what many private colleges charge. You can see the average net price (what students spend to attend after factoring in scholarships, grants) for every NY college in this chart.

Two-year community colleges charge a little less, with base tuition of $5,560 for New York residents.

And SUNY schools have a long history of launching high-profile careers. (Just ask Billy Crystal, Al Roker and Edie Falco, not to mention the Nobel Prize winners and members of Congress with SUNY degrees.)

The network of 64 campuses includes research universities, academic medical centers, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, colleges of technology and an online learning network. Its flagships, Long Island’s Stony Brook University and the University at Buffalo, together have annual research expenditures of more than $660 million and offer more than 700 degree programs, as my colleague Maureen Mullarkey reports.

SUNY's 'PUBLIC IVY' 🏫

There’s also Binghamton University, which Forbes magazine deemed one of the "New Ivies," along with the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia and other nationally known schools. Fittingly for a so-called public Ivy, the school has the lowest acceptance rate in the SUNY system. This year, Binghamton received its largest-ever donation, a $30 million gift from a graduate who co-founded Bloomberg LP, along with $25 million in state funding for artificial intelligence research. You can read more about why it’s been attracting more attention lately here.

Throughout the SUNY system, the most popular programs focused on business, management and public administration, with more than 50,000 students enrolled in classes in those disciplines. Nearly as many students were taking classes in health and related fields.

Financial aid for SUNY students includes the Excelsior Scholarship, which covers the full cost of tuition after other aid for eligible students from households earning up to $125,000. For adult students ages 25 to 55, SUNY Reconnect offers free associate degrees in high-demand fields.

For applicants who have their materials ready early, SUNY also has been waiving application fees in recent years for a few weeks in the fall.

‘VIBE AND CULTURE’ ⭐️

But the college search isn’t just about finances. It’s also important to make sure the school’s "vibe and culture" are right for each student, as one educator told Newsday’s Nicholas Grasso. At a research university, many classes will be held in massive lecture halls, especially in the early years. That might not be a good fit for a student who needs extra attention for learning differences or other challenges.

SUNY’s smaller schools include Long Island’s SUNY Old Westbury, with about 5,000 students, and SUNY Geneseo, an upstate honors college with about 4,000 undergraduates. Both offer liberal arts programs that include humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

Other factors to consider:

• College offerings, including majors, research programs, extracurriculars and student-faculty ratios. 

• Travel time from home. (Is your child planning to come back each weekend for home-cooked meals? Or would they prefer to be too far away to bring back their dirty laundry each week?)

• Whether the campus is a "suitcase school," meaning many students go home each weekend. Ask current students, and look up data on the percent of students who come from nearby counties or farther away.

• Whether the school is in an urban, suburban or rural environment, and what the weather is like.

• Whether the school serves a diverse mix of students, with plenty of appealing food options and off-campus services like hair styling.

But don’t write off a school just because it doesn’t check every box. As one educator noted, even if students don’t love the snow, it’s not like they’ve got to shovel the driveway. 

TRY THIS 💻

You don’t have to travel to learn more about SUNY schools. Search online for the phrase "day in the life video" and the name of the school, or search on YouTube or the college social media platform ZeeMee to learn more about each campus. You can also quickly browse and compare SUNY colleges by acceptance rates, costs, areas of study and more using our search tool.

SEND US YOUR QUESTIONS 💬

What questions do you have for Newsday’s staff and our network of experts? Share your thoughts about selecting schools, seeking financial aid, increasing your odds of admissions and many other topics. You can contact us by email at collegeguide@newsday.com.

NEXT WEEK ✅

The financial aid process has gone through a big overhaul over the last year or so, with new restrictions on loans to parents, updates to student loan payback options and lots of other changes. We’ll dig into it in Week 4.