Student interest in UC Santa Cruz reaches all-time high

The University of Santa Cruz is seeing a record number of applications. According to the school’s admissions department, there were nearly 60,000 undergraduates who applied for the 2016 Fall Quarter. On Monday, NewsChannel 5 found out what the increase could mean for students and the community.

“Whereas people used to treat us like their back up choice. Now we are their first choice,” UCSC admissions director Michael McCawley said.

Big new application numbers for UCSC and they’re the highest in the school’s history.

“In all my years. It is always gratifying when numbers like this come out. This is an all-time high for UC Santa Cruz both at the freshman level and at the transfer level,” McCawley said.

The school saw over 60,000 undergrad applications up more than 8 percent from a year ago. Over 49,000 high school apps and more than 9,000 transfers. But does more interest mean UCSC will be accepting more students?

“I would think that is probably a good guess. But although there is a lot of analysis that goes into this so we are still we just released the overall application numbers today but we really do have to get in there an analysis this,” McCawley said.

McCawley tells us that official admissions numbers won’t be announced for a couple months. Students said they’re concerned more students will mean larger classes

“With my classes, as more frosh are coming in, they get really compacted and we don’t want that,” a student said.

But possibly having more students could mean more money for local businesses.

Anne Funk is a manager at Java Junction just down the street from the university.

“For business locally it would mean an increase definitely as far people coming in the morning on their way to school. I think it would help as far as also being regulars having then in their more often, they come in once and they will come in again,” Funk said.

But she also has some concerns.

“As far as local housing it has always been a problem. The more the campus expands the harder it is for people to find housing including for locals like me,” Funk said.

Still UCSC said it’ll be looking at all those questions before deciding how many students can be let in.

ORIGINAL STORY: UC Santa Cruz officials say student interest is at an all-time high. A record number of undergraduate students applied for the fall 2016 quarter, up 8.8 percent from last year.

“It is gratifying to see such strong demand from our California students, as well as the increased demand from students from outside our state,” said Michael McCawley, director of admissions. “UC Santa Cruz is definitely on a lot of students’ radar these days, and for many of them, we are their top choice.

Officials say there’s also increased interest from ethnically diverse students. Time Maganize recently listed the university as one of the top 25 in the country that has diversified the most from 1990 to 2014.

NewsChannel 5’s Paul Dudley is headed to the university. He’ll have more on the impact of this tonight at 5 and 6 p.m.