Reviewed on Jan 28, 2025(Enrolled 2008)
What Students Say
Likes
- 1. You get TA easily ( pays more than anything )
- 2. Amazing labs to focus on your research
- 3. Friendly area to live in close to silicon valley
Dislikes
- 1. Extremely difficult housing situations.
- 2. Overpriced rent lack of housing on campus.
- 3. Strikes and protests happening which sometimes block access to campus
Course Curriculum
8
- The difficulty level depends on the courses. However, the professor explains the classes and the syllabus in the beginning of the class and you can decide after that. There are some courses that don't have exams, that have presentations, novel projects, or all of the above. You need to decide what you take based on your time.
- There will not be more than two classes in a day and you will have classes at least twice or three times a week, which is much easier.
- The average in any graduate class is not more than 100 students for a popular course.
- In MS-CS, there are 20 Indian students.
Admission Experience
-
I applied for the following universities:
- Indiana University Bloomington ( Admitted)
- UC santa cruz( Admitted)
- Syracuse University ( Admitted)
- Purdue University west lafayette( reject)
- UC Berkeley( Reject)
- UC Santa Barbara( Reject)
- UC Davis ( reject)
- CSU long beach ( Admitted)
- Illinois institute of technology (Admitted)
- Indiana has bad weather, which made me reject it.
- Rest all of my rejections were mostly because of a lack of research papers in my profile, as despite work experience and achievements and a stellar SOP, my profile lacked research experience.
- CSU Long Beach is cost effective but the class size is huge and you don't have easy access to professors or resources.
- Illinois gives you easy admits but its a private institute that probably gives admits to anybody with scholarship but I heard from students the courses are just as easy as undergrad and not up to standards.
-
I chose UC santa cruz because
1. Almost every student gets TA, which pays 3.5k dollars monthly along with halving your tuition fee and covering insurance.
2. Splendid weather
3. Proximity to the bay area
4. Easy access to conferences and career fairs
5. Excellent labs for research, which make the college very underrated - You are required to submit the SOP, transcripts, 3 recommendation letters, and a diversity statement by the deadline. Once accepted, you need to do a WES evaluation of the transcript.
- You don't need to write GRE. Just a TOEFL score of 80+ is sufficient or IELTS 7 band. However for TA , You need a speaking score of 26+ or an IELTS 8 band in speaking
- There is only fall intake in the UC system. Plus, if you take the fall term and get a job, your graduation falls perfectly in line with the 1st H1B Cycle, which seems to be the best-case scenario.
- Also on the west coast, the weather will be similar to southern India around that time. It seems like the best time to transition.
- The admission process took 5 months.
Faculty
8
- The faculty to student ratio is 1:50, plus the presence of TA for every course reduces this even further, which makes it much easier for the students.
- The courses are very fast-paced and at times difficult to adapt to as its a quarter system and unlike a semester-based system you only have 3 months to complete a course instead of 6 months. However, the professors clearly tell the difficulty level and the prerequisites, which make it easy to decide.
- I admire Prof. Scott Beamer as he has a splendid research lab and also Prof. Rick Graziani, who teaches computer networks like no other person.
Campus Life
10
-
There are many colleges
1. Cowell stevenson college
2. Merill college
3. John R lewis college
4. Jack baskin school of engineering
5.kresge college
6. Rachel carson college
7. Oaks College. - There are also 3 libraries in the campus.
- We celebrate Diwali, Holi, and also several Bollywood nights and movie nights in the college. There will be graduate student commons every first week of the month where every graduate student may get together at a pizza place and get beer and pizza.
Part Time Jobs
- You need to apply for the TA
- The pay is around 3.5k dollars, with the tuition fee being reduced by 50%, which makes the total salary around 70k dollars per year.
- There are graders tutors readers position available which pay a total of 3000 dollars per year.
- Its significantly easier to get a TA compared to any other college in the US.
- You sometimes can end up getting RA (10% chance), which may wave off your tuition entirely and pay you a 4000 dollar stipend but it is usually reserved for PHd candidates.
- The only thing that is new in this entire question is the process. You get a form you apply. If needed, mail the professors with your resume and convince them you are good enough that they recommend you to the department, and the department makes the choice I dont see how i can describe this again despite mentioning everything before hand in the previous questions These questions have already been answered long ago, and its very hard to write 350 characters for every answers. You need to ensure the responses are right rather than making word count as a parameter here.I earn up to 30 dollars per hour and that seems to be the standard.
Placement
6
- However, not everyone is guaranteed to get TA. Its just statistics that everyone usually ends up with a TA. However, the college is not responsible if you don't get a TA.
- The major companies hiring from the college are
- EPIC Health
- Ericsson
- Arista Networks
- Expedia
- Meta
- Nvidia
- Cadence
- Intel
- Marvell technology
- Keysight technology
Accommodation
Off Campus
4
- Finding accommodation in Santa Cruz is the hardest. It is ranked worst in the entire US.
- However, using sites like Zillow, Placeforrent, fb market place helps a lot. The best case is to contact seniors to see if anyone is graduating and take their spot and items, which will be significantly cheaper and save time.
- My monthly rent when I came from India without any help from seniors was 1100 dollars. But after 1 year, I was able to find housing for 800 dollars. It is best to take advice from people who have been in the area before making a deal.
- Since the college housing is not adequate in numbers, you can expect to live at least 4-5 miles from campus and travel by bus.
Exams
-
Just TOEFL or IELTS is required as an exam condition. However, you need 26+ speaking or 7 bands speaking in TOEFL or IELTS to get teaching assistantships, along with 80+ total TOEFL score or 7 bands total IELTS.
- The documents required are
- 3 LOR
- 1 sop
- 1 resume
- 1 CV
- 1 diversity essay
- There was no interview in the admission process So i wouldnt know much of this process.
Fees
- So if you are accepted, you will have to pay 12,000 dollars every 3 months as tuition fee. Along with this, you can expect living expenses to be around $1500, inclusive of rent and utilities.
- However, with TA, they pay you 3500 dollars monthly and your tuition fee is reduced to 5000 dollars. (Could not get easier.).
- In my case, my rent was around 1100 dollars. My living expenses are around another 400 dollars.
- The buses around Santa Cruz are free for college students.
Scholarship
- I did not receive any scholarship for this university. Almost every public university does not provide scholarships towards masters students and reserves them for PHD candidates.
- Also, most of the scholarships are towards residents, green card holders, citizens, or Hispanic Latino communities, making it almost impossible for immigrant students to secure one in a public university.
