The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university, one of the ten campuses of the University of California. Located 75 miles (120 km) south of San Francisco at the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on 2,001 acres (8.1 km²) of gently rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay. Since its founding in 1965 , UC Santa Cruz has evolved from its origins as a showcase for progressive, cross-disciplinary undergraduate education into a modern research university with a wide variety of both undergraduate and graduate programs. It is currently ranked as the 79 th Best University in the U.S. by US News and 76 th best by The Washington Monthly.
