It was recently announced that starting this year in New York City, and later expanding to other cities, students with grades and scores in the top 10% of their class will automatically be accepted to one of nine SUNY campuses.

These campuses are the University at Albany, University at Buffalo, the SUNY college of environmental science and forestry, SUNY Geneseo, SUNY New Paltz, SUNY Oneonta, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Purchase College, and Stony Brook University.

To be eligible for automatic admittance, you need to be in the top 10% of your class, on track to graduate with an international baccalaureate diploma or advanced regents diploma. To get the advanced regents diploma you have earned over a 65 on your ELA regents, 3 math regents, one social studies regents, 2 science regents, and a world language regents and any other regents you take. Or you need to have SAT or ACT scores above a threshold.

These schools will notify eligible seniors in the fall. This change is because freshmen enrollment in higher education has been declining especially for students in low income households. Governor Hochul had a goal of enrolling 500,000 students system wide last year and w fell extremely short with only about 367,000 students enrolling in fall of 2023.
In another attempt to boost admissions SUNY, CUNY, and 50 other private colleges are offering students the chance to apply for free through November 3rd. It is unclear whether this will continue next year. CUNY is waiving application fees through November 15th.