CUNY Brooklyn College

Public · Moderately Selective · NY

Photo: Beyond My Ken (CC BY-SA 4.0)

School data & stats

TypePublic

LocationNY · Northeast

SettingUrban

Undergrads10,543

Student:faculty13:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate34.2%

6-yr grad rate53.9%

Drop-out rate19.9%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$7k

Out-of-state tuition$15k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity75.5%

Gender diversity54.4%

International3.1%

Identity—

Overview

Brooklyn College occupies a graceful quadrangle-and-ivy campus in Flatbush, a layout unusual among CUNY schools and much of New York City generally, often compared to a small New England liberal-arts campus dropped into Brooklyn. It has long served as a gateway for immigrant and first-generation New Yorkers seeking an affordable, respected four-year education, and it maintains a reputation for taking its academic core seriously even as a large public commuter college.

Academics

Film, education, and the sciences are particular strengths, with the film program benefiting from proximity to New York's television and production industry and from a faculty that includes working film professionals. The college maintains a fairly traditional liberal-arts core alongside these professional tracks, and its honors program offers smaller classes and closer faculty mentoring for a subset of high-achieving students within the larger college.

Campus & student life

The quadrangle campus gives Brooklyn College a more traditional, self-contained collegiate feel than many urban commuter schools, with lawns, mature trees, and a real sense of enclosed campus space, even though most students still commute from throughout Brooklyn and the wider city rather than living on campus. The surrounding Flatbush and Midwood neighborhoods, with their dense immigrant communities, shape a student body that is unusually international for a single campus.

Getting in

Admission follows CUNY's largely transcript- and test-based review, with the film and education programs in particular drawing more competitive, portfolio- or interview-informed applicant pools. The honors program requires a stronger academic record and separate application, offering a more selective track within an otherwise broadly accessible college.

After graduation

Film and media graduates often move into New York's television and production industry, aided by faculty connections and the city's sheer concentration of media jobs, while education graduates move directly into New York City's public school system. The college's affordability and CUNY-wide alumni network give graduates a practical, locally rooted set of career pathways.

Worth knowing

The unusually collegiate physical campus, rare among CUNY schools, is one of Brooklyn College's most distinguishing features and gives it a different day-to-day feel from more high-rise, purely urban CUNY campuses. Its Flatbush location also places students within one of Brooklyn's most culturally diverse neighborhoods, reinforcing the college's long-standing identity as a gateway institution for new immigrant communities.

brooklyn.cuny.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate58.4%

Enrolled mid-50%SAT 950–1340

Test policyoptional

Rec letters0

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

Regular decisionFeb 1

AdmissionRolling

Applying