NY suburban mom here. Tons of kids in our area go to the SUNYs, especially Bing. The sciency kids tend to also like Stonybrook. The more I learn about other State’s systems, the more grateful I am to be in NY. Rather than one flagship that eveyrone wants and few can get, we have many excellent schools with different strengths and different characters. Our tuition is reasonable AND because we don’t have one “star” school like UVA, regular smart kids can actually attend our universities.
My smart, pre-med Jr. will definately be looking at a couple of the SUNYs and one of the CUNYs.