Choosing Your College Affiliation

The colleges at UC Santa Cruz are instrumental in creating the learning communities and supportive environment that characterize the UC Santa Cruz experience.

All undergraduate students, whether they live in university housing or not, are affiliated with one of 10 colleges. In addition to housing students in small-scale residential communities, each college provides academic support, organizes student activities, and sponsors events that enhance the intellectual and social life of the campus.

Every college community includes students with diverse backgrounds and academic goals. Your college affiliation is independent of your choice of major.

How to choose your college:

• If you can, come and visit UCSC—you'll get a good feel for the different colleges and that will help in your decision process.
• Use the web to learn about each of the colleges. The theme/focus of each college is unique and the architecture and layout of each is different—are you drawn to one more than another?
• Read about the core course for each college.
  • What is a core course?
    Each college has a unique course that emphasizes the theme of the college. These courses, known as “core courses,” help develop critical thinking and writing skills necessary for success in university work. The core courses are required for all new freshmen entering UC Santa Cruz and satisfy a campus general education requirement.
• Look at the individual college locations.
• When accepting your offer of admission you will have an opportunity to rank your top five UCSC college preferences. You can also choose to indicate "no preference" meaning you will be fine with any of the colleges.
• The Office of Admissions will affiliate you with one of UCSC’s 10 colleges. The college affiliation takes into account enrollment levels at each college and any preferences you have indicated. The Admissions Office does their best to assign students to one of their preferred colleges, but unfortunately that isn’t possible in all instances.
• Students are usually very happy at their assigned college, but if you would like to request a change of college, there is a limited time period during which newly admitted students may submit an appeal.