Astronomy & Astrophysics at Stony Brook University

If you plan to study astronomy and astrophysics, take a look at what Stony Brook University has to offer and decide if the program is a good match for you. Get started with the following essential facts.

SUNY Stony Brook is located in Stony Brook, New York and approximately 26,782 students attend the school each year. Of the 5,185 students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Stony Brook University in 2021, 12 of them were astronomy and astrophysics majors.

Want to know more about the career opportunities in this field? Check out the Careers in Astronomy & Astrophysics section at the bottom of this page.

SUNY Stony Brook Astronomy & Astrophysics Degrees Available

• Bachelor’s Degree in Astronomy

SUNY Stony Brook Astronomy & Astrophysics Rankings

The following rankings from College Factual show how the astronomy progam at SUNY Stony Brook compares to programs at other colleges and universities.

Note: Although rankings can help you see some information about a school, it's not a good idea to depend on them alone. Be sure to check out other things about the school before making your decision to attend.

Bachelor’s Degree Overall Quality & Other Notable Rankings

The astronomy major at SUNY Stony Brook is not ranked on College Factual’s Best Colleges and Universities for Astronomy & Astrophysics. This could be for a number of reasons, such as not having enough data on the major or school to make an accurate assessment of its quality.

Ranking Type	Rank
Most Focused Astronomy & Astrophysics Schools	65

Astronomy Student Demographics at SUNY Stony Brook

Take a look at the following statistics related to the make-up of the astronomy majors at Stony Brook University.

SUNY Stony Brook Astronomy & Astrophysics Bachelor’s Program

In the 2020-2021 academic year, 12 students earned a bachelor's degree in astronomy from SUNY Stony Brook. About 42% of these graduates were women and the other 58% were men. The typical astronomy bachelor's degree program is made up of only 41% women. So female students are more repesented at SUNY Stony Brook since its program graduates 1% more women than average.

Prospective students may be interested in knowing that this school graduates 6% more racial-ethnic minorities in its astronomy bachelor's program than the national average.*

The following table and chart show the race/ethnicity for students who recently graduated from Stony Brook University with a bachelor's in astronomy.

Race/Ethnicity	Number of Students
Asian	1
Black or African American	1
Hispanic or Latino	2
White	6
International Students	1
Other Races/Ethnicities	1

SUNY Stony Brook also has a doctoral program available in astronomy. In 2021, 0 student graduated with a doctor's degree in this field.

Related Majors

• Atmospheric Sciences & Meteorology
• Other Physical Science
• Geological & Earth Sciences
• Chemistry
• Physics

Careers That Astronomy Grads May Go Into

A degree in astronomy can lead to the following careers. Since job numbers and average salaries can vary by geographic location, we have only included the numbers for NY, the home state for Stony Brook University.

Occupation	Jobs in NY	Average Salary in NY
Physics Postsecondary Professors	1,430	$117,370
Natural Sciences Managers	1,360	$148,460
Physicists	950	$138,920
Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Professors	880	$108,020

References

*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

• College Factual
• National Center for Education Statistics
• O*NET Online
• Image Credit: By Danski14 under License

More about our data sources and methodologies.