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UC Berkeley is an American dream engine.
- Berkeley has been recognized as the leading university in moving students further up the economic ladder.1
- Berkeley matriculates over 20 percent more Californians now than 10 years ago.2 In-state tuition is locked for six years once a student starts.3
- For Californians earning less than $60,000, the net cost of attending has plummeted by 40 percent since 2007.4
- Tuition for low-income students (net of aid and inflation) has fallen over the last 20 years by 35 percent. Nearly two-thirds of undergraduates receive financial aid.5
- Children from high-income families have an admissions advantage at peer private universities, but not at UC Berkeley.6
- Berkeley educates almost as many Pell Grant students as the eight-university Ivy League.7
- Transfer students (95 percent coming from California’s community college system) represent about one-third of Berkeley’s incoming students. Nearly half of transfer students are the first in their families to attend a four-year university.8
No private university educates at Berkeley’s scale.
- Berkeley enrolls more undergraduates than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia combined.9
We set the standard for public education and research excellence.
- We are the No. 1 public university in all five of the most cited college rankings.10
- 63 (and counting!) Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with Berkeley,11 including four in 2025.12 Berkeley researchers discovered a record of 16 Periodic Table elements.13
- 50 Berkeley graduate divisions, schools, and disciplines rank in the top 10 in the country,14 and 23 undergraduate programs rank in the top 5.15
- Berkeley educates more undergrads who go on to earn a doctorate than any other U.S. university.16
- We are in the top five for granting doctorates and for training tenure-track faculty.17
Berkeley honors its mission of enhancing society and the greater good.
- Our undergraduates produce more funded new enterprises than those of any other university in the world.18
- The world’s most valuable platform for curing genetic disease, called CRISPR, was developed at Berkeley — and won the Nobel Prize in 2020.19
- Berkeley is the all-time top global producer of Peace Corps volunteers.20
- The university’s researchers and students partner with communities across the state to find solutions to problems affecting California residents.21
Have an item to add? Please email chancellor@berkeley.edu.
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Footnotes:
1 Chetty, R., Friedman, J.N., Saez, E., Turner, N., & Yagan, D. (2020). Income segregation and intergenerational mobility across colleges in the United States. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(3), 1567-1633. Based on longitudinal data from the U.S. Departments of Education and Treasury through 2014, the most recent data sets of this kind available.
4 https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/undergraduate-affordability
5 https://inspire.berkeley.edu/get-inspired/calfacts/
6 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/11/upshot/college-income-lookup.html
7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/09/19/new-report-challenges-the-ivy-league-to-enroll-more-pell-grant-recipients/ and https://financialaid.berkeley.edu/types-of-aid-at-berkeley/grants/federal-pell-grant/#:~:text=%E2%80%8B27%25%20of%20Undergrads%20Receive,education%20is%20within%20your%20reach
8 https://capitalstrategies.berkeley.edu/anchor-house-transfer-students
10 https://inspire.berkeley.edu/o/the-rationale-and-methodology-behind-berkeleys-aggregated-ranking/
11 https://inspire.berkeley.edu/get-inspired/nobels/
12 https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-wins-5-nobel-prizes-3-days-and-sets-new-world-record
15 https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/09/22/uc-berkeley-named-top-public-school-in-the-country-by-us-news/
16 https://www.highereddatastories.com/2023/10/undergraduate-institutions-of-doctoral.html
17 https://www.highereddive.com/news/Berkeley-Harvard-Michigan-Wisconsin-Stanford-most-faculty/633842/ and NSF.
18 https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pitchbook-university-rankings