Santa Cruz,CA | Community Guide

‘Not to worry. You will fit in just fine. And yes, they are friendly. You know one thing, people want to get away from the routines as known in their high school gulags.
Lots of students who attend UCSC are those who come there in part to get away from the tangles they knew in their home communities. Many are from southern and northern California. Caucasians are well-represented. I attended the campus for 1 year — at Cowell College some years ago, and it was predominantly Caucasians from southern California, followed by Chicano and then west Asians.
Of Asians, near East Asian are in a minority, such as Indians, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans, as are middle Easterners.
Native Americans and African Americans are in the minority, too, due in some part to trepidations just as you have — on whether they will fit in. UCSC for the past 10 years and better has consisted primarily of American-Caucasian and east Asian students (largely Chinese-American). When it first opened among the UC’s, its student body was overwhelmingly Caucasian American.
As to the campus smelling of weed, well … [ What!!?] I have to say don’t believe what you hear. Santa Cruz is no more a party campus than many schools in California. Though you can be sure it is not the bastion of conservatism as is Pepperdine University.
Only that UCSC bears its earliest reputation from earliest times, during the period of Civil unrest of the late 1960′s and on into the 1970′s, during which it still bore the reputation of a party school. But don’t be fooled; this today is a pronounce mistaken image. What it is now that it was not before is, — it has a much larger student body. No longer can it be said a small UC campus.