FAQ for New Grad Students ( Updated Mar 17^th 2007)

I started a small FAQ as I was typing almost the same thing to all the prospective grad students. Since most people who are going to be looking at this page are probably going to be Indians, this FAQ has an Indian bias. Disclaimer: Anything in this page is my own personal opinion about the situation here. You are requested to analyze the situation by yourself before making any major decision.

1)I have got admit in UCSC. Haven’t been given aid. What are my options?

UCSC is a costly university. If we haven’t been given aid during the admission it is unlikely that you will be given RA before you come over here. You might get in touch with a professor whose interests matches yours and start working with him. If you manage to impress him, he might give you a RA some time later. But it all depends on how much funding he has at that point of time and how much you would be useful to him. Getting a TA in the fall quarter is hard as it is mostly given to students who are promised TA along with their application. It becomes slightly better by Spring quarter with some going in for a RA. But please note that there are 2 kinds of fee that one needs to pay. One is in-state fee and the other is the out of state tuition fee. If you happen to get a TA which doesn’t come along with the admission offer, you may not get an out of state tuition fee waiver so you still have to shell out some money from your pocket.

2) I have got admits from X,Y,Z and UCSC. Which one shall I choose?

The decision is yours. My guidance on choice would be to look at research work ( profile of professors, labs, publications in the research group) in your area of interest rather than looking at rank of universities alone. UCSC is a growing university and sometimes it looks to be better than its rank because of its closeness to the silicon valley. But how that could translate into an advantage for you depends on your specific case.

3) What about on-campus jobs other than RA or TA?

I don’t know of any grad-student who is doing an on-campus job. Not sure why. There are grader positions which might be relatively easy to get but you will probably land up getting 700$-800$ per month and nothing else is taken care of.

4) What’s the cost of living?

On campus housing for Fall 2006 costs $750. If you have funding try choosing that as it is one of the best places to live in. If you go off-campus you might find yourself a place for $600 or so. Also if you happen to find roommates to share you might end up paying lesser. ( All depends on how much you want to share.) You might be able to manage by spending around $1000 /month for your entire expense. Note that the academic fee would alone cost you $8000 per quarter. So the total expense for you will be $8000/quarter academic fee plus $1000/month living expenses. You should be able to finish your masters in 5 quarters.

6) Which airport should I land in to come to UCSC?

San Jose is the nearest airport. But San Francisco is the port of entry. You could drive from San Francisco too. Try to get hold of someone who can drive you from SFO when you land here. If you haven’t found anyone, mail the egroups. Someone might be free to drive you down here. There is also the airporter taxi which might cost around $50. That’s a reasonable price to pay for transportation.

7) Which of the professors here have funding? Whom should I contact for this particular field? How do I send an initial mail?

Do your own search by looking at their websites. You can ask someone working in the professors group about the funding. If you have done something related to what the professor work, directly mail him saying that you are interested to work with him along with your resume.

8) I have decided that I am going to be in Santa Cruz? How do I start searching for housing here?

House searching is Santa Cruz is a bit complicated. The house owners may want to meet you personally before renting out their places and you may also want to look at the place before moving in. So u may want to temporarily stay in someone’s place before really moving in. But most of the seniors may not be here during summer as they’ll being doing their internship. But you might consider staying for a few days with friends/relatives in Bay Area which is just an hour drive from here before moving in. Don’t worry if you don’t know anyone, we should be able to get you some temporary accommodation. The easiest thing to do is to get into grad housing. (U can indicate your preference for roommates but I can’t guarantee that all your preferences will be satisfied.) Mostly the preference about staying in a girl’s only apartment is taken care of. Grad housing is normally in demand and gets filled up really quick. So the booking details come along with the admission letter and the booking date is around April. So watch out for it. If u r looking at off-campus housing, u got to study the Santa Cruz map and look for places which are walking distance from the route number 16 bus. (found in www.scmtd.com). The places near the metro station are considered not great places to roam around in the middle of the night. Best thing to do is to keep in touch with one of us by phone. We’ll probably try to co-ordinate some housing arrangement in July/August. April/May timeframe is too early for any discussion on off-campus housing.

9) How do I get the ids of the desi seniors in SC?

Browse the websites for desi names and u should be able to catch hold of someone. Plus if you are an orkut user, Santa Cruz community is known as baskin. So u can get hold of a lot of people there.

10) I am coming for internship from May to July and I need to find accommodation. What do I do?

The tricky part is the Indian summer and the summer in Santa Cruz don’t match. So its tough to find great places for this duration. Most places are leased till mid June and they don’t get vacant before that. So u need put a little more effort for searching. Looks at craigslist.org or the ads in housing.ucsc.edu. Call up the landlords from India (I believe there is a cheap way of doing it through net) and talk to them. They should probably be ok with a lease of 3 months during that timeframe. They often need to see u in person before letting u rent the place. Some motels/inns are available for temporary housing (http://www.hi-santacruz.org/ ) where u can find temporary accommodation. Do use the tips from the other housing faqs that I have put. Its probably going to be a tough to find desi people who are looking for roommates as our houses till the end of the academic year would already be full. But do mail the egroups and see if anyone is looking for a roommate.

11) What kind of clothes do I need to bring for Santa Cruzian weather? How cold would it be?

The weather here is great. (This is probably one of the best places in the US to be in as far as weather is concerned). So u might experience something similar to Bangalore. Jeans, T-shirts would be the way to go. ( For people from Chennai, who have been wearing formals to college, there isn’t any dress code here J…). I brought the jacket that I used in Bangalore.

12) Which groups are supposed to be good in UCSC? Is there a list of current seniors with their specializations?

Go through the research work of all the profs. You would then get an idea what’s happening and what’s good for you. Contact the appropriate people ( Some of them might have graduated by the time u read this page.)

Image Processing – Priyam, Sumanth , Amyn
Theoritical CS – Pritam, Anindya, Avik
Computer Networks - Dhananjay
Communications/ Signal Processing – Madhan
Information Systems -Anita
Computer Architecture – Sangeetha, Alamelu
Analog circuits – Mohan
Storage Systems - Suresh

Do mail me if you have any further questions so that I can update the FAQ. If you are planning to attend ucsc this fall, welcome aboard. J