UC Berkeley is the No. 1 public university in the U.S and the eighth-best university in the world, according to the Times Higher Education’s 2025 World University Rankings, released on Oct. 8. Berkeley has held the ranking of top U.S. public university for nine of the past 10 years.
This year’s rankings evaluated more than 2,000 universities from 115 countries and territories and were based on five criteria: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry...
For UC Berkeley Political Science graduate student Dinah Lawan, April 14, 2014, was a night she will never forget. Lawan went through the terrifying ordeal of being a kidnapping victim of Boko Haram, and later escaped to pursue higher education in the U.S.
Today, as she works towards her doctorate to help those suffering in conflict zones, Lawan recalls how the kidnapping changed her life forever.
Soldiers Arrived Lawan, who was 15 years old and in her final year of high school at the time, spent that...
UC Berkeley’s Department of Music unveiled the new Helen and Thomas Wu Performance Hall in September, following an extensive renovation that was years in the making. The reopened space includes a larger stage, new seats, and state-of-the-art sound, lighting, and digital technology upgrades.
The Shining Lights Program is a unique, experiential, semester-long leadership development program committed to supporting the growth and professional development of women and women-identifying future leaders and their allies in the math and physical sciences.
The Shining Lights Program equips participants with essential skills for successful careers in science through leadership skill building, coaching, networking, and mentoring. This comprehensive initiative encompasses both technical proficiency and interpersonal competencies, providing...
Top philosophy graduate students from around the world are finding their way to UC Berkeley thanks to a recently established fellowship that enriches the discipline with new approaches.
The fellowship honors Carol Lee Price, a Berkeley alum who led a curiosity-driven life. Price was born in Cleveland to a Jewish family that emphasized education as an object of value that no one could take away. Whenever she moved, she took the knowledge she had gained with her.
Price found a home at Berkeley, where she majored in...
Glaciers are retreating around the world as the planet warms, but scientists have debated how severe the shrinkage is compared to periodic glacial advances and retreats since the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.
A new study of four glaciers dotting the high Andes in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia shows that, at least in the tropics, the...
UC Berkeley Interdisciplinary Studies major Frida Calvo Huerta, a first-generation Mexican immigrant, came to the U.S. at a young age with her family. Her hard work and commitment to academics helped her get into UC Berkeley. Reflecting on the arduous journey it took to study at UC Berkeley as an undocumented student, she founded the UndocuScholars Program, which helps other undocumented students successfully get through the UC admission process, including navigating college as first-generation undocumented students. The free 10-month virtual program, which includes...
William Carter was in a National Archives reading room in the United Kingdom staring at a box of tattered pages covered in cursive writing, sea water stains and smears of blood. It smelled musty, and his hands became smudged turning the soot-covered pages.
Carter, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in geography, was mining these centuries-old slave ship logs in 2020 as part of his research into the transatlantic slave trade and what lessons from then might apply to our own understandings about race, literacy and power today.
But there was a problem: He couldn’t read a single...
Glaciers are retreating around the world as the planet warms, but scientists have debated how severe the shrinkage is compared to periodic glacial advances and retreats since the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.