Welcome to Berkeley—the beating heart of the University of California system.
If Stanford is the shiny fortress of private ambition, Berkeley is its public mirror. Every year, we work with families dreaming of Cal. And for many of them, we have the hard job of delivering some somber news: Berkeley may not be in the cards.
Every fall, roughly 124,000 students apply for a spot in Berkeley’s first-year class. Only 13,700 are admitted. That’s an overall acceptance rate of 11.7% (and only 7.3% for out-of-state students), which puts Berkeley into one of the highest selectivity tiers.
While Berkeley is technically a public university, that “public” doesn’t make it any easier. In fact, the combination of limited seats, high in-state and out-of-state demand, and an overwhelming number of qualified applicants makes it one of the most brutal admissions environments in the country.
The strongest applicants, those who actually make it through Berkeley’s holistic review, understand how to use the UC application to signal the values Berkeley cares about most: intellectual vitality, curiosity, social awareness, and real-world impact.
This guide breaks down what it actually takes to get in. We’ll start with selectivity and admit rates, then look closely at academic expectations, the myth of the “UC GPA,” and our UC strategies that give you a fighting chance.
If Stanford’s paradox is that the best essays sound effortless, Berkeley’s is that the best essays work not through ornament or performance but through clarity of mind and action.
Berkeley wants to see how you notice a problem, follow a thread of curiosity, and do something real with it. The entire UC application is designed to surface that pattern.
The students who get into Berkeley tend to write and act the same way: directly, specifically, and with proof behind every claim. Their PIQs read like field reports from a life being lived with purpose. The best Berkeley applications feel balanced: intellectual rigor, personal depth, and social awareness. Each piece of the UC application covers one side of that triangle.
That’s the Berkeley current: intellectual curiosity with a civic charge.
When we work with students on UC applications, we help them construct PIQs that show not just what they did, but what they figured out while doing it. And we help them find balance—academic depth, personal growth, and contribution—so the set reads like a complete picture of someone who thinks and builds in equal measure.
This kind of strategy is honest, grounded, and precise.
That’s who Berkeley admits, the ones already doing the work. The ones who’ve found clarity not just in thought, but in motion.
And that’s what this guide will help you find.
Everyone knows that getting into Berkeley is “hard”... but just how hard is it?
Let’s start with the numbers from Berkeley’s 2024–2025 Common Data Set:
|
Total |
In-State |
Out-of-State |
International |
|
|
Applicants |
124,245 |
72,156 |
29,788 |
22,301 |
|
Admitted |
13,714 |
10,774 |
2,186 |
754 |
|
Enrolled |
6,272 |
5,247 |
643 |
382 |
|
Admit Rate |
11.7% |
14.9% |
7.3% |
3.4% |
The discrepancies in admit rates between in-state and OOS or international students surprises a lot of people. But like most public universities, Berkeley is bound by California state priorities, including maintaining access for residents and balancing funding needs with equity goals.
For out-of-state applicants, Berkeley is one of the most competitive public schools in the US.
Out of 29,788 non-California applicants, only 2,186 were admitted, which is a 7.3% acceptance rate. That’s lower than Cornell, Boston University, and NYU.
There are a few reasons for this:
What does this mean for you if you’re applying from outside California? First, set your expectations accordingly. Second, you need a cohesive story that clearly fits Berkeley’s public mission and intellectual culture. If you’re applying from Boston or Seattle, for example, your essays should show why Berkeley specifically makes sense for your goals. That could look like making connections with the Bay Area’s startup ecosystem, the fusion of public service and research on campus, or Berkeley’s long history of social innovation.
You’ll apply to UC Berkeley using the UC Application. UC Berkeley doesn’t take the Common App, allow letters of recommendation, or consider test scores.
That means your UC application has four major considerations:
In this next section, we’ll go through the big-picture strategies we use when working on PIQs with our clients.
The UC essays are short, direct, and designed to help readers understand who you are beyond your transcript. You’ll choose four out of eight prompts, each with a maximum of 350 words. Berkeley takes these responses seriously. They are the single most important narrative part of your UC application.
UC Berkeley uses a comprehensive review process that values context, initiative, and academic depth. In your essays, admissions readers are looking for evidence of:
Your PIQs will also be pretty different from your personal statement in terms of style and tone.
While your personal statement should be creative and tell a vulnerable story, UC readers prefer essays that are straightforward and specific.
A few guidelines here:
If a reader looks at your PIQ and it reads like anyone could have written it, you’re not done writing. Your essays should be specific to who you are and what you’ve done—so much so that no one but you could have written them.
Some students find that picking which PIQs to respond to is the hardest part. Each PIQ serves a different purpose. You’ll be asked to respond to four of the eight options, so your goal is to pick four that let you show different dimensions of your experience.
Prompt 1: Leadership
Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.
Use this if you’ve led a team or built something (a team, project, or community effort, etc.). Focus on what you did and what leadership meant to you. Write about your strengths, but avoid being self-congratulatory.
Prompt 2: Creativity
Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.
This one is best for students who are genuinely creative (music, art, writing, creative uses of technology etc.). Avoid being hacky with this prompt (e.g., “I’m most creative when I doodle after a test”). You want to show admissions officers how you genuinely use creativity in your life.
Prompt 3: Greatest talent or skill
What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?
Use this if you have a specific ability and have had measurable impact or big recognition or award. Ideally it will be something you’ve practiced deeply over time. Avoid silly answers like “my greatest talent is tying my shoes.” Good for sustained commitments like music, coding, writing, debating, athletics, etc.
Prompt 4: Educational opportunity or barrier
Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.
Notice that this prompt has two options: either a significant opportunity OR an educational barrier. If you’ve had a cool internship, research experience, extra class, or other educational opportunity, you can write about it with this prompt. On the flip side, if you’ve managed a learning disability, language barrier, school change or other situation that affected your education, this prompt might be for you, too.
Prompt 5: Most significant challenge
Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?
Different from #4, this prompt is for life circumstances outside of school. If the story adds real context to your academic record or personal development, you might answer this one. If this story doesn’t fit into one of your PIQs, you could think about putting that context in the additional information section.
Prompt 6: Favorite academic subject
Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.
Everyone should consider answering prompt #6. You are applying to go to school, after all. Use this prompt to show “academic fit” with your main academic interest. You’ll probably end up elaborating on one of your academic-related ECs or even on something you’ve done in the classroom that has inspired you to pursue the academic path you’ve chosen.
Prompt 7: Contribution to community
What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?
This one’s a good option for service work, mentoring, or impact that’s local and specific. Focus on concrete results rather than vague “helping others” language. Remember that UC PIQs prioritize action, so lay out the real steps you’ve taken to help your community.
Prompt 8: What makes you a strong candidate
Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?
This is the flexible option. Use it if you have a story that doesn’t fit anywhere else, like a project, experience, or perspective that defines your application. Some students revise their personal statement to use with this prompt. Take a look at the UC values and see if anything resonates.
One of the biggest mistakes applicants make is thinking of each PIQ as a standalone essay. UC readers don’t read them that way. They read all four together and in tandem with your UC activities section.
Your goal is to pick four prompts that make sense together as a cohesive narrative.
You want your answers to show range across three areas: intellectual curiosity, personal character or qualities, and real-world impact.
So here are our rules for choosing your UC essay prompts:
Each PIQ should reveal something distinct.
If all four essays focus on academic projects, your application will read as narrow. If all four are about leadership, your narrative may seem inflated or repetitive.
A good mix might look like:
That combination gives you both intellectual and personal depth.
If multiple essays emphasize the same activity, interest, or theme, you’re not maximizing your application space. Being redundant is a missed opportunity to stand out.
If you must write about the same topic twice (for example, your most important extracurricular that has a lot of impact and has taken a lot of your time), you need to write about it from two completely different angles.
Think of your PIQs as the flexible half of your UC application. Your transcript and activities are pretty set in stone by this point. But you have full control over what goes into your PIQ essays. Use this to your advantage by looking at your application holistically and choosing topics that help you address or compensate for any weaknesses.
If your GPA is strong but your activities are limited, focus on the initiative and intellectual depth you’ve shown inside the classroom or at home. If your résumé is strong but your grades are slightly lower, focus on growth, context, and your leadership outside the classroom. If your interests are scattered in your transcript and activities, use the essays to clarify your academic direction.
To sum up:
When read as a set, your essays should make sense together. They should reinforce your main academic and personal strengths without repeating information from your activities list.
Good PIQs read like a concise, factual explanation of what drives you and how you’ve made the most of the opportunities available to you. That’s what Berkeley readers are looking for.
Everyone worries about the essays, but the activities section is where Berkeley gets the first real sense of how you’ve spent your time and whether that time adds up to something meaningful.
You get 20 spaces in total to write about your activities and honors/awards. Description lengths are usually around 350 characters (that’s 200 characters more than the Common App!).
When readers skim your activities list (and yes, they aren’t always reading every single word), they’re looking for a few things:
Write your activities descriptions with these questions in mind.
Each entry gives you about 350 characters for the description. This length can depend on which category the activity falls into, so make sure you create your UC application account and see what the specific requirements are. Some categories also ask you to write an additional description of the organization or criteria for the activity.
For your activities descriptions, good entries answer three questions:
Here’s how that looks in practice:
Weak:
“President of environmental club. Organized meetings and events.”
Better:
“Environmental Club President. Devised and implemented composting program across campus, diverting 1,000+lbs of waste annually. Organized 50 volunteers to install compost bins across the school. Partnered with 3 local community gardens to donate the compost. ”
The weak description barely gives any information or context about the activity. It’s vague and generic. But the second description is better because it is clear about the writer’s involvement, it gives specific details about what actions they took within the club, and it uses numbers to illustrate a clear impact they had on their community.
In general, you want to list your most important commitments first. “Most important” could mean different things: the activity that occupies the most of your time, the one that you have the greatest accomplishments in, the one that is most interesting related to your academic interests, etc. Figuring out which activities go first is part of your application strategy.
There are a few simple mistakes students tend to make when filling out the UC activities:
Another question we get a lot is about the competitiveness of Berkeley's CS options. Because although the admit rate for the entire school is around 11%, competitive majors like CS can face increased competition.
Berkeley’s College of Engineering houses 13 different types of engineering, including Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS). Within EECS, you can major in EECS, CS, or ECE.
Because Berkeley EECS is so in demand and the majors draw from both sides of computing, its admission odds are significantly lower than the campus average. But Berkeley does not publish specific admissions data for Computer Science or EECS.
In short: for a student intent on Computer Science at Berkeley, you are competing not just with the broader Berkeley admit pool but with one of the most selective sub-programs. Your application must stand out in both academic depth (particularly in math, programming, engineering thinking) and in genuine demonstration of interest in the field.
Many of our students are interested specifically in Berkeley MET. The Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology (MET) program is one of the most competitive undergraduate options at UC Berkeley. It’s a dual degree program between the College of Engineering and the Haas School of Business and is designed for students who want to study both engineering and business at a high level.
You apply once, as a first-year applicant, to the College of Engineering and select a specific major (like EECS, IEOR, or Bioengineering). (Although there are limited options for applying if you’re already a student at Cal.) When you check the MET box, you’re considered separately for MET admission, and if you aren’t admitted, you’re still considered for your chosen engineering major.
Official numbers on MET’s acceptance rate aren’t published each year. But MET is among the hardest undergraduate programs in the country to get into. It’s roughly comparable to or even more selective than Stanford or Harvard. They keep enrollment small, at about 50 students, to maintain the close-knit feel of the program. Since MET receives thousands of applications every year, it’s very highly competitive.
Now, what helps you actually get in?
MET’s mission is this: We accelerate visionary leaders. Through a comprehensive education in business and engineering, we empower students to transform and reshape the world in sustainable and scalable ways.
This mission guides their admissions decisions. When you apply, you should show how your own experiences and interests align with this mission. You also need to explain why MET’s combined program in business and engineering makes the most sense for you.
Successful MET applicants look less like “students who like both fields” and more like students who need training in both fields to achieve their goals, especially as those goals relate to MET’s mission.
When you apply to MET, you have to complete an MET supplement in addition to the UC application. This supplement includes an essay and a video.
The supplement may change from year to year, so always check MET’s admissions page for the most up-to-date information. But typically you have two prompts options. Choose one and write an essay under 350 words.
The prompts typically include…
Berkeley MET admissions officers don’t have a preference between prompts, so choose the one that balances out your application the best. The written essay is evaluated on content, critical thinking, organization, and how directly you answer the prompt.
In addition to the written essay, Berkeley MET applicants must submit a video response as part of the supplemental application.
Unfortunately, you don’t get to know the video prompt ahead of time!
You’ll receive the video prompt by email shortly after submitting your UC application. It’s not something you can pre-record and upload on your own; you’ll log into a secure portal and record your response directly through the system.
MET says to think of the video as “a brief interview where we hope to see your best self, and we welcome responses that are authentic and spontaneous over those that are perfectly polished.”
See all of MET’s video tips here.
Berkeley is one of the toughest schools in the country to get into, but also one of the most rewarding. Strong applicants show curiosity, initiative, and a record of doing meaningful work. The UC application gives you room to prove that using examples from your life. Focus on what you’ve built, contributed, and learned. And if you want expert help crafting that kind of application, get in touch with our team.