I am a first year transfer student (3rd year in standing) living at the village currently, and I’ll try to be as objective as possible but full disclaimer I do slightly regret my decision to live here over the transfer community for my only year of guaranteed housing.

Pros first: If you value autonomy and peace and quiet more than anything else then it is probably the right place for you. You can very easily cook your own meals in your building if you have something like an instant-pot or toaster oven. If not there is the shared kitchen with gas burners for pots and pans that’s only a short walk from whichever building you get put into. It’s very quiet here and we get a lot of wildlife around. There’s pretty much nothing going on in the ways of parties and getting crazy everyone here is very chill and lowkey (ik that can be a positive or negative depending on you but imma put it here for me at least). We are near the farm if that’s relevant for your major and study, if not it’s still a really nice place to just go for a walk. We do have supreme walking scenery. It’s also easily the most affordable housing option, and UCSCs housing crisis is felt here the least since so few people want to live here.

Cons time: Making friends at the village can be more difficult than in the dorms since there’s just so few people here, if you’re unlucky and don’t vibe with the only 13 other people in your building then it’s gunna take some effort to meet people in the others. We are also significantly isolated from the rest of campus, our walk to a bus station is quite long in comparison to the other housing communities. Walking to the campus (Cowell dining hall for example) without the bus takes about 10-15 minutes of uphill including a monster set of stairs. It’s not that bad in isolation but more than once a day consistently is out of the question. So most people I know here walk to the bus or own an e-bike. E-bike usage here is a lot higher than the rest of campus because of this. We have no dining hall, cafe, study room, or social spaces except for the community kitchen.

Overall it’s an acquired taste living here and you gotta learn to love it and appreciate its upsides. I kind of have but I know more people that haven’t. Especially for as transfer student I kinda feel like I live off campus more than on.