Stony Brook U sets enrollment record as 4,042 students join incoming class

Stony Brook University welcomed the largest incoming class of first-year undergraduates in the school’s history with more than 4,000 students having enrolled, university officials announced Monday.

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

Farmingdale State College also reported record enrollment for the fall term with more than 10,000 students, marking an increase of 6% in enrollment over the 2023-24 academic year, a 9% increase in its freshman class and an 8% increase in fall application submissions, according to a release issued Friday.

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

Stony Brook has experienced a housing shortage that was worsened at the start of school by a strong storm that knocked out capacity at two residence halls.

"We have $2 billion of deferred maintenance, roofs, pipes-busting and in addition we need at least four new research buildings and if we are going to grow our enrollment which we would like to — we need housing," said Stony Brook Interim President Richard L. McCormick.

He noted that the diversity of accepted students has grown this year as well as for students from low-income backgrounds. The U.S. Supreme Court had overturned affirmative action in college admissions last year. Stony Brook University officials reported that 10.7% of the fall incoming class identified as Black and 15.7% identified as Latinx — representing an increase of more than 200 students who identify as such.

"Harvard may be down, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) may be down, but we are up ... and we want to continue to grow and we can do all that. but there are some limiting factors — we don’t have enough beds," McCormick said.

The university also wants to expand its research facilities by adding four new buildings, including a chemistry building, interdisciplinary health sciences research building, earth and climate systems research center and an engineering ai and computational sciences building.

Heather Lynch, Institute for Advanced Computational Science Endowed Chair and Department of Ecology & Evolution Professor, told Chancellor King that part of her job leading Stony Brook's new Collaborative for the Earth is to break down interdisciplinary barriers among faculty to work together and "that's hard when we don't have space where these researchers can all be together."

The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences' current buildings represent a major barrier to collaboration because they are temporary constructions erected in 1971 and were never designed to accommodate the kind of research labs and offices now needed, Lynch said.

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

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