Stony Brook U sets enrollment record with 4,042 students joining new class

Stony Brook University welcomed the largest freshman class in the school’s history, with more than 4,000 students enrolled, university officials announced Monday.

That enrollment figure represents a 13 percent increase from last year, when 4,042 students enrolled this fall. Stony Brook received the most undergraduate applications of any State University of New York school, officials there said in a news release. The number of transfer students also increased by 4 percent.

Farmingdale State College also reported record enrollment for the fall semester, with more than 10,000 students enrolled. This represents a 6% increase in enrollment over the 2023-24 academic year, a 9% increase in the freshman class and an 8% increase in the number of applications submitted for the fall semester, according to a news release issued Friday.

As Stony Brook has grown in popularity, issues of space and capacity on campus have become a challenge. Local leaders, faculty and students told State University of New York Chancellor John King in a meeting last week about the need for more residence halls, academic research buildings and quiet places to study on campus.

Stony Brook is facing a housing shortage that was exacerbated at the start of the school year by a severe storm that left two dorms at capacity.

“We have $2 billion in deferred maintenance, roofs, broken pipes, and we need at least four new research buildings. And if we want to grow our enrollment, which we want to, we need housing,” said Richard L. McCormick, Stony Brook’s interim president.

He noted that the diversity of students accepted this year has increased, as has the diversity of students from low-income families. The U.S. Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions. Stony Brook University officials reported that 10.7 percent of the incoming fall class identified as black and 15.7 percent identified as Latino, an increase of more than 200 students who identify as such.

“Harvard may be declining, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) may be declining, but we’re moving forward… and we want to continue to grow and we all can. But there are a couple of limiting factors: We don’t have enough beds,” McCormick said.

The university also plans to expand its research facilities with four new buildings, including a chemistry building, a building for interdisciplinary health sciences research, a research centre for earth and climate systems and a building for technical artificial intelligence and computer science.

Heather Lynch, a professor in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science and a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution, told Chancellor King that one of her roles is to lead Stony Brook’s new Collaborative for the Earth to break down interdisciplinary barriers among faculty so they can work together better. “That’s hard to do if we don’t have a space where all these researchers can be together.”

The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences’ current buildings pose a major obstacle to collaboration because they are temporary structures built in 1971 and were never designed to house the research labs and offices now needed, Lynch said.

Hailee Shehu, 21, a senior from Lindenhurst studying mechanical engineering, said she and other students sometimes have to return to the dorms to study when the library and other areas are too crowded.

“I’ve really gotten the chance to talk to a lot of students on campus and we love all the opportunities to get involved,” she said. “We need more places on campus where groups can come together to study.”