University of California-Santa Cruz Top Questions

Laid back caring intelligent engineers.

My classmates are often passionate about their class and major.

Classmates are helpful and welcoming. It is very hard to NOT make friends within a class.

Students at UCSC range from the studious and conservative, to the care-free and drug-loving

Classmates range from hipsters to jocks and preps, with everything in between. Sometimes it looks like high school all over again, but then you realize this time everyone gets along.

They are open-minded for the most part.

Classmates can be a bit frusterating at times due their constant usage of cell phone, laptop and conversation distractions.

I enjoy the classmates that I am friends with, but other than that I don't really know a lot of them.

Playing cards

Largely white, and upper/middle class. From all over California. Tend to be liberal. Some amount of variation in this, clearly. My group of friends is very heterogenous, highly politically and socially aware. Students here talk about things going on in the world and are interested, it's not "dorky" to talk about things learned in class, in fact, is encouraged. an interesting point is that UCSC has 10 colleges, each with a discernably different student archetype. This is something you figure out after two or so years at UCSC.