SUNY Cortland
54%
Acceptance rate
$17,180
Tuition/yr
7,000
Enrollment
15:1
Student:Faculty
About SUNY Cortland
SUNY university in Cortland, NY. Strong education and sports management programs.
SUNY Cortland (State University of New York at Cortland) is a public comprehensive college founded in 1868 in Cortland, New York, approximately 45 miles south of Syracuse. It enrolls around 6,981 students across three schools: Arts and Sciences, Education, and Professional Studies, offering 67 undergraduate majors and 39 graduate programs.
The university has a particularly strong national reputation in Physical Education Teacher Education, Sport Management, Kinesiology, and Recreation studies. Its Sport Management department is the only one in the SUNY system offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees, and its graduates have interned with ESPN, the NFL, NASCAR, and the US Olympic Training Center. The student-to-faculty ratio is 15:1, supporting small class sizes.
Cortland's 191-acre residential campus sits in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region. About half of all undergraduates live on campus. The university has a moderately selective acceptance rate of around 60% and received a record 18,355 first-year applications for Fall 2025.
Campus & Location
NY
Suburban
Optional Practical Training (OPT)
All graduates qualify for 12-month OPT. STEM-designated programs (CS, Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, Sciences) qualify for 24-month STEM OPT extension — 36 months total work authorisation.
For Nepali students
- SUNY Cortland automatically awards most admitted international undergraduate students $7,500 per year for up to four years, bringing the out-of-pocket annual tuition cost to approximately $17,180 before room and board, making it one of the more affordable U.S. public university options for Nepali students on an F-1 visa.
- The Wah Chip and Yuki Chin Scholarship ($500–$2,000 per semester) gives preference to incoming first-year and transfer international students from Asia, meaning Nepali applicants are directly eligible.
- Graduates on F-1 visas qualify for 12 months of OPT after graduation; those in STEM-designated fields may apply for a further 24-month STEM OPT extension, giving up to 3 years of US work authorization, a strong post-study pathway for students in Kinesiology or Computer Science tracks.
- SUNY Cortland's well-regarded Education and Sport Management programs align with career paths common among Nepali students pursuing teaching credentials or sports-industry roles in the US or back home.
Admission requirements — Nepali equivalents
A rough translation of the published minimums for Nepali applicants:
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