they will not stop with the junk mail, but i would definitely recommend shelling out the bucks for the lifetime membership now.

any specific reasons, by any chance? that is, anything in particular that you've gotten out of it thus far?

(i'm in the same boat as morgan)

Ah, one thing I did get out of it directly was a 10% discount (~$55) on a course through Berkeley Extension that I needed to take. (Also good for their online classes, which have jumped in price recently, and may also count toward some other UCs' Extension courses.)

I haven't received too much junk mail as a result of membership. Occasional fund-raising letters (often from the library, actually) and the rare insurance offer, but not too much. Come to think of it, most of the is from the "Cal Fund", and it may be that one is added to that list regardless of CAA membership.

I don't know how the volume of solicitations compares to the recent-graduates-who-haven't-joined-CAA junk mail since I joined right away for the library privileges. (Which don't extend to remote access to online resources like journals, BTW. But you probably have access to most of those through Stanford.)

Also, about once a year, a student-telemarketer calls and asks me to reminisce about my days at Cal and give advice, and then asks me to make a donation. But it's pretty manageable.

Hmm, the remote access thing is good to know, since I use that a lot. I can probably have friends give me any articles I can't access through Stanford, but I can do that without CAA. :~) Thanks for the comment!

I was thinking about re-joining the UCSC Alumni Association for UC library privileges last year. (I gave up my membership when I lived in Phoenix because it was useless there.) But finding out what exactly "library privileges" entailed was annoying, so I gave up. The CAA site spells out much better what you get with membership. If UCSC is the same, then perhaps it's worth it. Of course, remote access to journals is what I really want, but it seems I have to become a student again to get that.

I just paid off my UCSD lifetime membership, and I don't even get library privliges (well I do, but my work ones beat the alumni ones. Of course since I'm regional president it looks bad if I don't actually pay.... But they go up every year, and lifetime is a long time.... if you stay in CA for any length of time, it should pay off.

As a Stanford grad student you'll have library privileges at Berkeley -- there's a reciprocal agreement. -- NVH