Stony Brook University Top Questions

The most frustrating part about Stony Brook University is the opportunity to make friends after freshman year. After freshman year, most people have created their circle of friends and tend not to deviate away from that group, making it difficult to make friends.

Professors not realizing that every student isn't 18 years old with no life experience

I'm learning this applies to most parts of life. Some of the people are quite frustrating. Stonybrook is an incredible academic institution with proven curricula for intense study, and is a perfect fit for hardworking and self motivated students. The academic environment encourages personal enrichment, so it's frustrating that not every shares that mindset. Some students complain that courses are hard, like they expect getting into college to immediately hand them a degree and get an important job in their desired field. I'm discouraged and frustrated by lack of ambition and laziness.

The transportation systems are not always spot-on.

The most frustrating thing is the steadily increasing tuition amount.

The campus is very large, and the health professions side of the campus is very far and isolated from the undergraduate and graduate programs side. The social activities are not on the same part of the campus, so if you're a health sciences student, you basically are isolated from students and activities in other academic focus areas than health science.

There is a lack of connection between the professors and students. Besides a few set of very intelligent professors, the majority of the teaching staff tend to stick themself and are often times hard to contact.

The transportation is horrible. Buses are never on time and are completely unreliable. The absolute worse part is the amount of cuts to all programs except science and engineering majors. Although the budget cuts have hit everyone hard, the only ones suffering are the social sciences.

Stony Brook is a very large school, which mean very large lecture hall classes. It is sometimes frustrating to be in such a large class because you don't get as much individualized instruction. Also, you don't get to meet and interact with your classmates as much in a large lecture than in a small class.

Hard classes

The most frustating thing about my college is its inactive student body. Very few people compared to more than 20,000 students take active pursuit in athletics. Most of the throng either prefers to be in their dorms or studying in the library. In addition to that, I would say that even though the school made an attempt to make mathematics less daunting by making Math Learning Center (tutoring center provided by Teacher's Assistants in campus), there is a problem in the availibilty of more TAs and half of them fail to come on time.

Although the school is very diversed, there is still a lack of clash of the different cultural groups. After living on campus, I have noticed that many of the same or similar cultural groups tend to stick together rather hanging out with other races.

Its a big school. Its hard to know what's going on, especiallly on the weekends. Its also kind of hard to find food before noon on weekends. The majority of the campus leaves on the weekends, but its nice to have it quiet for a few days. You need to know where to look for activities and join clubs. Joining clubs wil make you experience at Stony Brook very fulfilling. All in all, the campus can be quite dead, if you don't know where to look.

Having little to do on the weekends, and walking in the rain.

The campus is packed.

The lack of academic scholarships based on GPA.I have a 3.9 GPA and the school doesnt provide me with any financial incentive to keep my GPA at that level as the price of education goes up.

The weekends are dead, as the majority of students are commuters from surrounding Long Island area, or from the city. The only social scene are bars and fraternity/sorority parties that involve alcohol. The food is expensive and not of the corresponding quality, according to the price. Without a car, access to the malls, stores, drug stores, etc is very difficult, as the free campus buses only run on weekends to specific destinations, and the county buses are late and unreliable. There is no walking access to the retail and food store world off campus.

The constant construction at the time to improve the campus

General Academic Advising Sucks, go only to your department advising!! Not enough ON CAMPUS HOUSING!!!!

The most frustrating thing about stony brook is the fact that if you don't drive or know someone who does drive it'll be hard for you to get around outside of campus for groceries, shopping, and acticities outside of caompus. we do have the LIRR stop right at our camops. But, in order to go to the movies, mall, etc. you definitely need a car.