What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$5,311 to $34,529 a year for in-state students, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate · in-state rates
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $45,619 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $37,130.Aid and debt
$18,653
average debt at graduation
1,788
students got merit aid
about 5% of undergraduates
$9,858
average merit award
Not reported by this school: share receiving need-based grants.
Getting In
A note for out-of-state applicants
University of California, Berkeley is bound by a California rule capping how much of its undergraduate class can come from outside the state. If you're applying from outside California, you're competing for a limited, separately-capped share of seats — a different picture than the admit rate above shows.
Key dates
Test scores
SAT composite range not reported by this school.
ACT composite range not reported by this school.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- GPA
- Personal essay
- Important
- Extracurriculars
- Character
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Considered
- SAT/ACT scores
- Recommendations
- Special talent
- First-gen status
- In-state residency
- Not considered
- Class rank
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
UC Berkeley rates course rigor and your essay as Very Important, and your activities as Important.
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Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA. And depth and leadership in a few activities matter more than a long list.
UC Berkeley doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
UC Berkeley just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-UC Berkeley essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
50.9% of UC Berkeley classes have fewer than 20 students.
50.9%
under 20 students
27.5%
20 to 49
21.6%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. UC Berkeley CDS 2025–26, I-3.
18:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
30%
live on campus
2.6%
of men in fraternities
6.1%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- Asian35.3%
- Hispanic22.6%
- White19.1%
- Multiracial7%
- Unknown / other4.1%
- Black1.9%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. UC Berkeley CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
81.3% of UC Berkeley students graduate in 4 years.
81.3%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
93.7%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
97%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
89.8% finish in 6 years, against 93.7% of all students.
A 3.9-point gap: Pell Grant students finish less often than students overall.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Berkeley.
Berkeley is a dense, walkable, politically loud small city that sits directly across the bay from San Francisco, and the university is the reason it exists in its current form.
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Telegraph Avenue runs into the south edge of campus and the hills rise behind it, so a student can be at a lab bench, a protest and a trailhead within an hour. The trade-off is cost: the Bay Area rental market is among the most expensive in the country, which is the practical reason 70% of undergraduates live off campus. BART puts downtown San Francisco about half an hour away without a car.
The City
Mid-size city
Berkeley, CA
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
Gordon Moore
Co-founded Intel and wrote the 1965 observation that became Moore's law. He graduated here in 1950 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry.
Class of 1950
Joan Didion
Essayist and novelist whose Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The Year of Magical Thinking reshaped American nonfiction. She took a BA in English here in 1956 and won Vogue's Prix de Paris essay contest in her senior year, which became her first job.
Class of 1956
Steve Wozniak
Designed the Apple I and Apple II and co-founded Apple. He started the degree here in 1971, came back a decade later to finish it, and received it in electrical engineering and computer sciences under the enrolled name Rocky Raccoon Clark.
Class of 1987
Chien-Shiung Wu
Experimental physicist whose 1956 Wu experiment overturned the assumed conservation of parity, and who worked on the Manhattan Project. She completed her PhD in physics here in 1940.
Class of 1940
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
The Big Game and the Stanford Axe
The football game against Stanford has been played since 1892, and the winner keeps the Axe — a trophy that was physically stolen back and forth for decades before the two schools agreed to compete for it.
The Campanile
Sather Tower, finished in 1914, plays live carillon concerts three times a day during term. It is the campus landmark and the thing students set their watches by.
The Free Speech Movement
The 1964 protests that began on Sproul Plaza made student political organising part of Berkeley's identity, and Sproul is still where campaigning, tabling and argument happen every weekday.
Golden Bear rituals
Cal's teams have been the Golden Bears since 1895, and the Cal Band's pre-game march down to Memorial Stadium — built directly over the Hayward Fault — is the ritual that fills the hill above campus.
Weekend escapes from Berkeley
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Berkeley
San Francisco
About 30 minutes on BARTMuseums, live music, the coast and an international airport, reachable without a car from a station a few blocks from campus.
Point Reyes and the Marin coast
About 1.5 hoursCliffs, beaches and hiking on the far side of the Golden Gate — the standard escape when the semester gets heavy.
Napa and Sonoma
About 1 hourWine country, and the nearest genuinely rural landscape for anyone who wants a day away from the city grid.
Lake Tahoe
About 3.5 hoursSkiing in winter and alpine lakes in summer. Far enough to be a planned trip rather than a Saturday.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Oakland International (OAK)
About 25 minutes from campus
For international flights: San Francisco International (SFO) — about 45 minutes.
Pro sports nearby
- Golden State Warriors NBA
- San Francisco Giants MLB
- San Francisco 49ers NFL
- San Jose Sharks NHL
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Berkeley sits inside one of the densest technical job markets in the world: San Francisco is half an hour away by train, Silicon Valley about an hour by car, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is on the hill directly above campus.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Apple
- Genentech
- Salesforce
San Francisco — about 30 minutes by BART, no car required
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
Berkeley admits 11.4% and does not look at SAT or ACT scores at all, so the transcript is the case, and 39.8% of enrolled first-years arrived with a straight-A record. In state that buys a $18,464 sticker at a university whose largest major is computer science at 18.7% of degrees, with engineering another 10.3% and social sciences 16.4%. Out of state it is $57,734, and aid covers 87.8% of need rather than all of it. The outcomes are why families accept the odds — 97% return for a second year, 81.3% finish in four years and 93.7% within six — and classes are smaller than the enrollment suggests, with 50.9% of sections under 20 students. Two things to be honest about before the deposit. Housing is the first: 30% of undergraduates live in university housing and everyone else competes in one of the most expensive rental markets in the country. The waitlist is the second: 6,479 students accepted a place on it for Fall 2025 and Berkeley admitted none of them. Greek life is small here — 2.6% of men and 6.1% of women — so the social centre of gravity sits with research groups, student politics and a city that has been arguing with itself since the Free Speech Movement.