PICTURE YOUR NEW HOME
As a purpose-driven community of changemakers, UC Santa Cruz is a place that makes thousands of students feel welcome every year.
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SPACE TO LEARN
Our campus covers over 2000 acres of rolling hills, redwood forest, and open meadows, offering panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay. Walk the extensive trails between classes or take advantage of our free shuttle service. Your experience will be enhanced by the 10 residential colleges, each of which is a distinct learning community with an intimate liberal arts school feeling where lifelong friendships often form. To fuel your body and soul, our campus features five dining halls, over 12 cafés and alternative eateries, food trucks, pop-ups, and food pantries. Catering to a wide variety of tastes, dietary needs, and religious observances, our menu is ever-changing and aims to please our hungry Banana Slugs!
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PICTURE YOURSELF LIVING AND LEARNING AT SANTA CRUZ
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Get Connected
With over 150 student organizations, you’re sure to find a way to get active and engaged in campus life, and find other people with shared interests.
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Build Community
Organizations and activities can enhance your academic and social life, help you build supportive communities far from home, and test-drive your leadership skills. Of course many are just plain fun!
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Find out More!
Want to learn more about how students find their communities at UCSC? Take a look at these publications!
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(African/Black/ Caribbean)
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(American Indian)
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(Latinx)
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(Transfer)
GET INVOLVED
➵ Residential colleges offer opportunities for leadership, volunteerism, co-curricular activities.
➵ Undergraduate research programs and many opportunities to work with your professors in their labs or studios.
➵ Student organizations —including fraternities and sororities—center around issues, activities, beliefs, and identities.
We provide recognition of academic achievement through ➵ Honor societies and intensive programs.
➵ Internships, fieldwork experiences, and exchange programs in the U.S. and abroad can give you hands-on experience and other enrichment activities.
➵ Artful expression —through exhibitions, musical groups, films, plays, and more—lets you express yourself and connect with other artists.
➵ The Global Mentorship Program eases the transition of incoming international frosh (first-year) students into the campus community by connecting them to campus resources, engaging them in activities, and offering a support system.
➵ Sports can enrich your college experience through physical activity in NCAA Division III athletics, sports clubs, and intramural sports leagues.
➵ Student government provides many opportunities for leadership through the Student Union Assembly.
➵ Volunteering helps you give back to your community and participate in service learning.
➵ Resource centers are available to people of color, the LGBTQ community, and women.
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Hear Lia Lara talk about how UCSC made her feel at home!
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LIFE IN SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA
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Picture Yourself in Santa Cruz
UC Santa Cruz is less than an hour’s drive from the heart of Silicon Valley and the entire San Francisco Bay area, not to mention that the city of Santa Cruz itself is home to entrepreneurs, progressive companies, inspiring leaders, a lively arts community, and global brands.
THE SANTA CRUZ BRAND
Santa Cruz is a personality that’s recognized around the world and is associated with creative community, enthusiasm for the outdoors, and independent thinking. It’s a vacation destination for surfers and mountain bikers. The world famous Santa Cruz Boardwalk attracts thousands of visitors each year. It’s no wonder that people around the globe know iconic brands like Santa Cruz Guitars and Santa Cruz Bikes.
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By The Sea
Taking advantage of our beautiful coastal location, UC Santa Cruz has established a 100-acre Coastal Science Campus right on the shore, with classroom, aquarium, and research facilities dedicated to ocean wildlife and conservation efforts. We operate the Institute of Marine Sciences and Joseph M. Long Marine Lab as well as the associated Seymour Marine Discovery Center—a community-supported marine science education center.
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Silicon Valley Campus
The campus, located in Santa Clara, is a multidisciplinary teaching and research hub that is home to a top-notch engineering facility, the SVLink incubator-accelerator program, and the office of Industry Alliances and Technology Commercialization. Our MS in Games & Playable Media and MS in Serious Games programs are based here.
UC Santa Cruz’s Silicon Valley Campus is home to a unique new Premed Postbaccalaureate Program that supports post-grad students seeking to boost their GPA in science courses, prepare for the MCAT, complete their medical school application, and better understand their career options.
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90 minutes to San Francisco
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45 minutes to Silicon Valley
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5 minutes to the beach
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5 minutes to forests & parks
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PICTURE YOURSELF IN OUR RESIDENTIAL COLLEGES
Why decide between an intimate liberal arts college or a large research university? Get the best of both! You can think of UC Santa Cruz as 10 interconnected liberal arts colleges huddled next to each other.
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Learning Communities
Our 10 residential college communities are interdisciplinary and house students from all different majors. Although each college has a theme, they aren’t tied to a specific major or discipline.
Combined with the resources of a world-class research university, our Oxford-style college system offers the opportunity to form a group of peers, take advantage of top-notch facilities, and connect with students from other disciplines. Students work with multiple advisers and our supportive faculty make themselves available to students.
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Choosing a College
During the admissions acceptance process you’ll be able to choose your college preferences. Every college community is a supportive environment for students with diverse backgrounds and academic goals. Students choose to be affiliated with a college because they are interested in the theme, where it’s located on campus, the room configurations available, the architecture of the buildings, or the programs offered.
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Housing
First-year students are generally assigned to live in residence halls at their college. Residence hall floors are typically shared by 15 to 50 students and have common bathrooms and lounge areas. Apartments, typically shared by four to seven students, have common living/dining rooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. Transfer students are generally assigned to live in the Transfer Community.
Undergraduate students are housed in small-scale residential communities. For fall 2024, incoming students who request university housing and submit all forms and required fees by the deadlines have priority for university housing and will be eligible for a one-year housing guarantee. For winter 2025, the housing guarantee will be for the remaining two quarters (winter and spring) of the admitted year.
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Dining
Our award-winning dining program offers fresh, healthy, and convenient options with plenty of variety. Specialty food trucks and cafés add tasty meal options.
- Flexible meal plans can be used at UCSC Dining locations all around campus, including dining halls, cafés, coffee bars, and markets.
- Dining locations are open early morning through late night.
- Vegetarian and vegan options, and meals for people with restricted diets are available.
- Diverse menus include foods such as halal options, and special meals for international holidays are also available upon request.
- Our sustainable food programs are nationally recognized and include produce from the UC Santa Cruz farm and local organic farms.
- About 25% of produce served in our dining halls is organic.
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TAKE THE TOUR
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OUR TEN RESIDENTIAL COLLEGES
Hear Evan Melito talk about how the college system eases the transition to the university
PORTER COLLEGE
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis: Life is Short, Art Endures
Founded 1969
Our theme manifests our belief that creativity is integral to all fields of study from art to physics to linguistics, and promotes an environment in which original thought, creative imagination, and personal and cultural differences are appreciated.
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“Even though choosing one side of campus versus the other can feel pretty difficult and intimidating, I’ve never found it hard to get around, to feel like I’m in community with other spaces on campus, or at all isolated.”
— Carolyn Mock, Porter College student from Novato, CA