Who's new: Introducing our 2021 incoming graduate student cohort

UC Santa Barbara welcomes 897 new graduate students at the end of this month. Below, we break down some statistics on this great group and give you a sneak peek at our upcoming series profiling 8 of these new students.

This month we welcome a diverse new class of graduate students. Coming from around the world and pursuing a wide range of studies, they are a fascinating group! Most of our incoming graduate students are between the ages of 22 and 30, but 48 new students are 21 years old and our oldest student is 69. Twenty percent are first-generation college students.

Below is a breakdown of our incoming students based on the race or ethnicity that they listed when applying to UCSB. *Please note that this data was collected by the Registrar's Office when students applied to UCSB so there are limitations on how representative this data is. One student reached out to let us know that they identify as Middle Eastern/North African, which was not already present in the data set. If you do not see your ethnicity reflected here, please reach out to us (GSRC@ucsb.edu) and contact the Registrar's Office.

Our new graduate students are from 53 different countries - from Bangladesh to Brazil, India to Italy, Turkey to Taiwan, New Zealand to Nigeria - representing nearly every continent. In fact, over one-third (38%) of incoming students are coming to UCSB from international locations.

Our U.S. students hail from 46 of the 50 states, and 43% of all incoming students are California residents. The most popular disciplines that our new graduate students have chosen are Environmental Science and Management (123 new students), the Teacher Education Program (88 new students), Computer Science (86 new students), and Electrical and Computer Engineering (76 new students). Overall, 71% of incoming students are in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and 29% of students are in SHEF fields (Social Science, Humanities, Education, and Fine Arts).

We asked 8 of our new grad students to tell us more about themselves, including what degrees they will be pursuing, what they are looking forward to in graduate school, and some fun facts about them. Starting next week, we will publish one profile per day leading up to the first day of classes to celebrate our incoming grads.

Stay tuned to learn more!

Welcome to all of our amazing grads!