Graduate Admissions
Explore Graduate Programs
Advance your artistic and scholarly practice at the UC Santa Cruz Arts Division, where graduate study is grounded in interdisciplinary research, critical inquiry, and creative innovation. Our programs support artists and scholars committed to rigorous practice, collaboration, and social engagement.
This unique, 2-year residential program seeks prospective applicants who want to develop their artwork in relation to social and environmental justice questions, contexts and communities. Headed by internationally-recognized artists and including affiliate faculty from across campus, the program integrates the resources of a great public university with the Art Department’s mission of educating and training students in cross-disciplinary, multimedia art practices.
The PhD program in Film and Digital Media challenges the traditionally conceived borders between creative and critical practice. The program enables potential dialogue between creative practice and theoretical knowledge as related forms of intellectual work and provides the conditions for students to realize a wide range of possible projects, including those that exist across the traditional divides of critical studies and production.
UC Santa Cruz offers three graduate programs in music. The MA degree has emphases in composition, musicology/ethnomusicology, or performance practice. The Ph.D. has an emphasis in cross-cultural studies, and aims to provide doctoral students with an integrative framework for music scholarship. The DMA, focused on music composition, allows students to pursue various and intersecting areas of emphasis such as algorithmic/computer-assisted composition, cross-cultural compositional practices, improvisation, collaborative composition, and other contemporary practices.
Social Documentation is a one-of-a-kind program designed for future documentarians committed to social change and to documenting communities, cultures, issues, and individuals who are marginalized in our current landscape of representation. Social Documentation (SocDoc) goes beyond the story.
UC Santa Cruz offers a one-year Master of Arts in Theater Arts that prepares students for professional achievements in interactive media and performance, stage design, directing, dramaturgy, performance, and performance scholarship, arts management, choreography, technical theater and stage management.
The Visual Studies Ph.D. offers an interdisciplinary program focused on visual-cultural scholarship, comprising specialized coursework and individual dissertation research in close coordination with faculty supervision.
How to Apply
Visit the UCSC Graduate Admissions website for more information on how to apply.
Application deadlines vary by program.
