"College is just as much about figuring out who you are as a person as it is learning in the classroom," shares Brandon Weiss '18. From discovering a passion for veterinary medicine in the Pre-Vet Club at Berkeley, to meeting and proposing to his fiancé on campus, and now thriving in a meaningful career in emergency and critical care medicine for animals, Brandon has built a life full of joyful community and enduring connections.
Over the summer, Kelly Ko loved taking the train to her internship in Taipei. The beautiful music that heralded its arrival was a refreshing change from BART’s jarring approach. At work, her managers would frequently take her out to lunch. Ko, who grew up speaking English and Cantonese in the Bay Area, was excited to practice her Mandarin with her coworkers.
Ko was participating in a six-person pilot program for Pan...
Last spring, we asked L&S alums to share a piece of advice for new first-year and transfer students at UC Berkeley - thank you to everyone who responded! Here are just a few pieces of wisdom from L&S alums.
The L&S First-Year Pathways program is now in its third year, and as some alumni from the first two iterations of the program have continued on their journeys in the College, they have identified key support areas that they believe would benefit the first-year student partipants in their academic and eventually professional futures beyond the program. In the profiles that follow, the L&S First-Year Pathways Alumni Team share about themselves, their experiences in the College of Letters & Science, and their...
L&S Alum Spotlight: Phuong Le '22 (she/her) Major: American Studies
Phuong Le graduated from UC Berkeley's College of Letters & Science with a degree in American Studies. While that may sound straightforward, her path was anything but traditional. After building a strong academic foundation at Berkeley, personal challenges with her mental health and finances ultimately led Phuong to withdraw from school just shy of graduation in 2017.
Over the next five years, Phuong worked tirelessly to overcome these obstacles, which were...
In new rankings released today (Monday, Sept. 29) by the Wall Street Journal and College Pulse, UC Berkeley was named the No. 1 public college in the country — the second year in a row it received the distinction.
The pinnacle experience for many UC Berkeley undergraduate students is the spring commencement ceremony. Wearing their cap and gowns, thousands crowd California Memorial Stadium, the Golden Bears’ historic home, to mark the beginning of a new chapter.
One Cal senior, Javier, knows he may miss this rite of passage and has prepared for a quieter triumph as the new fall semester gets underway this month. The 22-year-old sociology major, who plans to attend law school, is enrolled at UC Berkeley from Alameda County...
UC Berkeley Economics Professors Emmanuel Saez, Danny Yagan and Gabriel Zucman, and Economics Ph.D. candidate Akcan Balkir, were featured in The Atlantic.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the richest of rich Americans pay an average tax rate of 34 percent, higher than any other cohort’s. In reality, as everyone has long known, they pay less than that. A new study by some of the country’s most...
Starting this semester, UC Berkeley students can declare their intent to major in Korean studies. The program, sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, reflects surging demand across campus for a comprehensive and interdisciplinary evaluation of the Korean peninsula’s language, history, and culture.
This article originally appeared in Berkeley News on August 25, 2025.
In this first-person narrative, incoming first-year student Inès Pajot tells UC Berkeley News about cofounding a climate coalition in high school and how her early interest in astrophysics will inspire her...
