At a Glance
UC Santa Cruz admits 72.7% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Shown at in-state rates.
Debt at Graduation
49.8%
receive need-based grant aid
$19,891
average debt at graduation
UC Santa Cruz graduates carry an average of $19,891 in debt.
Merit Aid
1,227
students received merit aid
$10,212
average merit award
Getting In
UC Santa Cruz admits 72.7% of applicants.
This school reports SAT section scores but leaves the composite range blank, so there is no mid-50% band to chart.
ACT composite range not reported by this school.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of California, Santa Cruz rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
Class size distribution not reported by these schools' Common Data Sets.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
UC Santa Cruz data pending.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
22:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
5.5%
Men in fraternities
3%
Women in sororities
6%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
UC Santa Cruz's student body is null% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
UC Santa Cruz graduates 59.6% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
UC Santa Cruz graduates 59.6% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
UC Santa Cruz
59.6%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $41,179*
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
Graduation rate broken down by financial-aid status (e.g. Pell Grant recipients) isn't reported in this school's Common Data Set.
Freshman Retention
89.8%
89.8% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Santa Cruz.
The campus sits in the hills above Santa Cruz, a beach town of about 62,000 on the north end of Monterey Bay, roughly 75 minutes from San Jose over Highway 17. It is a forest campus rather than a city one — 2,000 acres of redwoods and meadow, only a fraction of it built, with deer and wild turkeys on the paths and the ocean visible from much of it. Students take a bus down the hill for the town, the beach and the boardwalk.
Notable Alumni
Maya Rudolph
Spent seven seasons on Saturday Night Live and has since won multiple Emmy Awards for her work on that show and on Loot. She lived in Porter College and took her degree in photography.
Class of 1995
Camryn Manheim
Won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for The Practice, and has worked steadily in television since. She took a BFA at Santa Cruz before her MFA at NYU.
Class of 1984
Laurie R. King
Writes the Mary Russell mysteries and the Kate Martinelli novels, and has won the Edgar and Creasey awards for crime fiction. She studied religious studies at Santa Cruz.
Class of 1977
Andy Hertzfeld
Wrote much of the original Macintosh system software as a member of Apple's Macintosh team, and later co-founded General Magic and worked on Google+. He took a master's degree in computer science at Santa Cruz.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
College town
Santa Cruz, CA
Best For
Traditions
The ten residential colleges
Every undergraduate is affiliated with one of ten colleges, each its own cluster of housing, dining and academic life with its own core course. The college, not the campus, is the unit students identify with — it is the structural fact that shapes social life here more than anything else.
Sammy the Banana Slug
The bright yellow, shell-less mollusc that lives in the campus redwoods has stood for Santa Cruz teams since the university opened in 1965, and students voted to make it the official mascot in 1986 over the administration's preferred sea lions.
Slug Start
The multi-day welcome that opens the year, run through the colleges rather than centrally, so a new student's first week is spent with the few hundred people in their own college.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and West Cliff Drive
About 15 minutesThe oldest surviving amusement park in California, on the beach at the bottom of the hill, with the surf breaks at Steamer Lane along the cliff walk beside it.
Big Sur and the Monterey Peninsula
About 1 hourHighway 1 south past Monterey and Carmel into Big Sur — the standard long weekend drive out of Santa Cruz.
San Francisco
About 1 hour 30 minutesThe nearest big city, and the usual trip for anyone wanting more than a beach town offers.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
San Jose Mineta International Airport (SJC)
About 1 hour from campus
For international flights: San Francisco International (SFO) — about 1 hour 30 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Santa Cruz Warriors NBA G LeagueAbout 15 minutes away
- San Jose Sharks NHLAbout 1 hour away
- San Jose Earthquakes MLSAbout 1 hour away
- San Francisco Giants MLBAbout 1 hour 30 minutes away
Career Proximity
Santa Cruz sits on the far side of the mountains from Silicon Valley — close enough that tech internships are routine, far enough that students are not living in it. Computer science is the largest degree area at 17%.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Apple
- NASA Ames Research Center
- Looker
- Plantronics
- Dignity Health Dominican Hospital
San Jose and Silicon Valley, about 1 hour 15 minutes over Highway 17
Who Thrives Here
UC Santa Cruz is test-blind: it does not consider SAT or ACT scores in admission at all, so there is no score to send and no score to worry about. What it reads instead is the transcript — the average high school GPA of enrolled first-years is 3.87, with 35.9% arriving at a flat 4.0 and another 36.4% in the band just below it. It admits 72.7% of applicants, and 91.0% of the entering class comes from California, where tuition and fees run $17,239 against $56,509 for everyone else. The campus is the thing people either love or leave: 2,000 acres of redwood forest above Monterey Bay, with every undergraduate belonging to one of ten residential colleges rather than to one central campus. Greek life is very small — 3% of men and 6% of women — so the colleges, not the fraternities, are where social life organises itself. Two trade-offs to weigh before committing. Teaching runs at 22 students per faculty member, and the school left the class-size table in its Common Data Set blank, so how many of those classes are small is genuinely unreported rather than merely unflattering. And completion takes time here: 59.6% graduate in four years against 73.8% within six. Aid is solid without being complete — 87.8% of demonstrated need met, and graduates who borrow leave owing $19,891.