University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university, one of ten campuses in the University of California.

Ranking

UC Santa Cruz is currently ranked No. 72 in the list of Best National Universities in the United States by the US News & World Reports, and 56th best by The Washington Monthly. In 2009, The Princeton Review (with Gamepro magazine) ranked UC Santa Cruz's Game Design major among the top 50 in the country. In 2011, The Princeton Review and Gamepro Media ranked UC Santa Cruz's graduate programs in Game Design as seventh in the nation. In 2012, UCSC was ranked No. 3 in the Most Beautiful Campus list of Princeton Review.

Programs

The university offers 63 undergraduate majors and 35 minors, with graduate programs in 33 fields. Popular undergraduate majors include Art, Business Management Economics, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Psychology. Interdisciplinary programs, such as Feminist Studies, American Studies, Environmental Studies, Digital Arts and New Media, and the unique History of Consciousness Department are also hosted alongside UCSC's more traditional academic departments.

Campus

Located 80 miles (130 km) south of San Francisco at the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay. The 6,651-acre (2,692 ha) UCSC campus is located 75 miles (121 km) south of San Francisco, in the Ben Lomond Mountain ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Elevation varies from 285 feet (87 m) at the campus entrance to 1,195 feet (364 m) at the northern boundary, a difference of about 900 feet (270 m).

2012 Catalog

View Larger Map