What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$8,717 to $33,323 a year for in-state students, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate · in-state rates
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $41,179 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $34,159.Aid and debt
49.8%
receive need-based grants
$19,891
average debt at graduation
1,227
students got merit aid
about 7% of undergraduates
$10,212
average merit award
Getting In
A note for out-of-state applicants
University of California, Santa Cruz is bound by a California rule capping how much of its undergraduate class can come from outside the state. If you're applying from outside California, you're competing for a limited, separately-capped share of seats — a different picture than the admit rate above shows.
Key dates
Test scores
SAT composite range not reported by this school.
ACT composite range not reported by this school.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- GPA
- Personal essay
- In-state residency
- Important
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- First-gen status
- Where you're from
- Considered
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Not considered
- Class rank
- SAT/ACT scores
- Recommendations
- Legacy status
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
UC Santa Cruz rates course rigor and your essay as Very Important, and your activities and your first-gen status as Important.
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Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA. Depth and leadership in a few activities matter more than a long list. And being first-generation can help your application here.
UC Santa Cruz doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
UC Santa Cruz just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-UC Santa Cruz essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
Class sizes aren't reported by this school.
22:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
5.5%
first-years from out of state
3%
of men in fraternities
6%
of women in sororities
Who attends
Not reported by this school.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
59.6% of UC Santa Cruz students graduate in 4 years.
59.6%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
73.8%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
89.8%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Graduation rate broken down by financial-aid status (e.g. Pell Grant recipients) isn't reported in this school's Common Data Set.
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.
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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.
The City
College town
Santa Cruz, CA
Best For
Notable alumni
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.
Traditions
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 from Santa Cruz
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 and game days
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
Internships and jobs nearby
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
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 — 86.8% of demonstrated need met, and graduates who borrow leave owing $19,891.