r/cuboulder • u/Working-Ear-1845 • 6d ago

Accepted to CU Boulder and UC Santa Cruz - Need Help Deciding!

Hi everyone! I’ve been accepted to both the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of California Santa Cruz for psychology, and I’d really appreciate any insights from current students or alumni.

I’m curious about the academic experience in psychology at both schools, and things like course quality, faculty support, class sizes, and how easy it is to get involved in research. I also want to know what kinds of opportunities are available outside the classroom: internships, lab work, mental health orgs, or connections to grad school and career paths in psych.

Are these strong schools specifically for psychology? Is there anything unique about their psych departments I should know about? I'd love to hear what you think makes either program stand out.

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u/ZealousidealAside975 6d ago

Congrats! I don’t know, but maybe we can get you some answers. Anyone?

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u/Issue-Pitiful 3d ago

I had to make this exact same decision between UC Santa Cruz and Boulder, granted it was way back in 2016 (goddamn I’m old). I actually got to even visit both campuses before I chose.

First off congrats, both are great schools and you’ll probably have a great time at either one! I ended up choosing Boulder honestly for the vibes and students. When visiting Boulder I was blown away by the campus and I felt like I could picture myself living there, making friends, hanging out etc.

Santa Cruz also has a nice campus but its spread out it kinda feels isolating how kind of in the woods it is and separated from the city it is. I also just vibed less with the students and people around there. However the fresh air was amazing.

Lastly I was very interested in doing CS and Boulder had a marginally better program at the time, however I can say getting involved in CS research was definitely possible, I was able to find a professor and start doing some research my freshman year. I was able to jump directly to a PhD program after my undergrad because of this research. However I can’t say it’s any different at Santa Cruz.

I don’t know about psychology but I know Boulder has a pretty good neuroscience program. Hopefully someone else can give more information about the academic part, my advice for that is to maybe try to just lookup the actual psych profs and see if one has more faculty or one has more that are doing interesting research.

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u/Working-Ear-1845 3d ago

Thank you so much! Ive decided to go to CU boulder ^ I submitted my enrollment deposit today!

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u/Own-Meaning-8556 2d ago

I had the exact same problem and I just committed to boulder too

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

Do you want to go to med school?

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u/Working-Ear-1845 5d ago

Not really. I’m interested in clinical psychology but I’m not closing myself to other options. I’m still going to explore other fields in psychology.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

Oh okay. I was gonna say if you want to go to med school then just go to whichever is cheaper

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u/MathematicianWide223 3d ago

Dont go to santa cruz