Greetings- I would love to hear any/all thoughts about being a humanities major at UCSC vs UC Berkeley. My daughter is grateful to be admitted to both for next year. She wants to choose the program where her peers will be highly engaged in learning and less focused on grades or prestige of the school. She currently attends a school where these things are front and center (grades, competition, and rankings) and finds this to be an impediment to joyful learning. Thanks for any insights!
Does the housing “issue” concern you at all? We took UCSC off the table after looking into housing issues.
It’s really too bad all the admitted student days are on the same day this year, because the ideal thing would be to talk to some students. Will she be attending one of the admitted student days?
My daughter’s college counselor told her that housing at UC Berkeley is worse than Santa Cruz! We obviously have to learn more…
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She is reaching out to students at both. We won’t be in town for admitted students day, which sounds like fun but more like a party designed to yield students than a time to really understand the day-to-day experience.
The issues with Berkeley housing, I think, are mostly that
- it’s expensive
- the cost means that students often share bedrooms even off campus (although I believe this happens around some other UCs as well)
- there are some bad companies that own a lot of student housing
- and just generally it’s a hassle with so many students at this huge university looking for housing each year.
Fortunately, at least, the university is in the middle of an actual city, with off-campus student housing directly adjacent to 3 sides of campus, and somewhat less expensive rental housing located a bit farther into the city but still within walking or easy public transportation distance.
My son is a freshman (currently on campus), and he didn’t have a whole lot of trouble finding and renting a great apartment for next year with the roommate group that he put together. But he will be sharing a bedroom with another student.
There are different issues with Santa Cruz. I do not have a student there so I am not an expert. You would have to talk to students there. But my understanding is that since UCSC isn’t really in the city of Santa Cruz, there are logistical transportation issues for students living off-campus, and the city of Santa Cruz is also just smaller, less student friendly, and as I understand it, simply doesn’t have as much housing potentially available to students.
Maybe I don’t understand the housing crisis. When we went to Santa Cruz, I don’t remember any towns, it was just Santa Cruz and the college on the hill. There was NO housing market, it was just the town of Santa Cruz. San Francisco is huge, there are tons of places. You may have to commute a bit but there IS a housing market. Am I missing something? Is there plenty of housing outside of Santa Cruz that is accessible by a short commute? Is there something I do not know about the Bay area? Public transportation seems great in the Bay area?
I have not actually looked for housing, so I may be completely off track.
yeah this.
There are beach and non beach towns to the south of Santa Cruz, such as Capitola, Aptos, Soquel, but it would depend on how far a student would want to commute to class.
Santa Cruz has several neighborhoods, Seabright, Live Oak, Twin Lakes, Pleasure Point, etc., but the rental market is always tight within the City of Santa Cruz.
A commentary on housing from a UCSC student who has some knowledge of the situation in Berkeley as well: Santa Cruz is A Housing Nightmare - by Darrell Owens
UCSC actually has a fairly large amount of on-campus housing, but the small amount of off-campus housing makes for a shortage from the student point of view.
Holy cats, that article’s eye-opening
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