<p>One way to find out is by looking at a couple of rankings for those programs. If you see that the department is ranked within the top 50, that would be pretty good for a SUNY for a common major like economics. I have found that when it comes to SUNYs, “strong” is really a term mostly used within the own school. For instance, when you look at rankings from different sources, it is unlikely you will find stony brook within the top 40 for something like computer science, chemistry, or what have you. But when you talk to the staff here, they will quickly tell you that the “computer science [or sciences] department here is very strong.” When you run that through a filter, it means relatively strong when compared to other departments like english or philosophy, which one may say are actually weak.</p>
<p>Therefore, it depends on the student. If you are comparing it to bigger out of state schools, then “strong” really doesn’t hold much water. But if you are set for stony brook or are just looking at sunys, then I guess you can use it to compare the departments within the system. I just wanted to make it clear that even if you find the department to be strong, it doesn’t mean it is among, or even close, to the top nationally.</p>
<p>I would think political science and economics go hand in hand, but like I said I don’t know much about their standings or quality. The economics class I was going to take was this semester.</p>