I went there two days ago to take a look, got a 2nd year to allow me to see his apartment. The real bedrooms are small but adequate for someone in their early 20s. I lived alone for two years in a real 1 bedroom apartment so for me it is too small. The converted living room into a bedroom is big. But again, you have no control over whether you get it or not. With housing, they may pair you with a second, third, or even fourth year and chances are, they would have taken the big room by then. There is no real living room, but a small corridor/foyer that I saw them but a couch and a tv. Kitchen was small, do dishwashers are anything like that. Dining room is small, but they tried to make it bigger by trying out layout B which cuts away parts of the Living room/bed room to add to the dinning area.
Overall, as the student said, some 90% of the students live on campus because of the cheap price. If I had my way, I would prefer how most of the Stony Brook Students do it, and that is 3 or 4 of them get together and rent a large house in a nice area and commute. Their rooms were massive, they had a full kitchen with granite countertops, full living room, full dining room, and even had a Den or something that they had no idea what to do with it so it was pretty much empty. If I had my way, I would probably go to an adjacent town in Westchester like Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mt. Vernon or East Chester and rent a 4 bedroom house for like $2000 and split it among four students. Unfortunately, 90% of the students live on campus so, it is will hard to get that. Maybe after making friends the first year, I'll be able to do that.
I wonder how expensive storage is since I have way too many things to fit into one of those small rooms. The other benefit of the on campus apartment is that you don't need a car, if you have one, you can park in the garage for $90 per month and not have to worry about Bronx Breakings, and flopping out of your bed and 20 min before class and still make in time.