Seawolves Fans

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I personally think "social life" is given way too much in level of importance

yes, but, the question is which matters- the reality or the perception? 

either way you see it- we are losing students because of this.  good, competitive students.  the unfortunate reality is turning out to be very costly.

i think if you fix this fixable problem- a LOT of other things will fall into place.  i'm happy to expand.

i also note that quite a few of our competitors have a similar problem, though perhaps not as acute.

you should brag about your success stories at SBU- we need more of that here. 

I also think that it is very hard for us to compete from an aesthetic standpoint, as many private institutions are built on park-like grounds, and unfortunately, many kids (and their parents) choose their destination school based on "looks", which adds to your stated perception problem.  Very hard for a state school to compete with this.  And BTW, I don't disagree with your argument, because perception does dictate a lot of decisions.  We want to rank as highly as possible in any sort of survey; yes, even the social one.

What I'd like SBU to tout more - and to me personally, this is the most important stat of all - Stony Brook ranks 33rd (tie) in the country, on Annual % ROI (Return on Investment) - that is, graduation salary relative to cost paid for the education.  We were 14th on this list a couple of years ago, so we have dipped a bit, but still quite impressive:

https://www.payscale.com/college-roi?page=130  (click on Annual % tab)

Put this one on the reality side of the board, but if marketed correctly, could grab the attention of some of those students that we are letting get away.