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B. Admission: Full Version

This version of the Guide to Graduate: B. Admission handbook has been made available for users who prefer to print or read it in its entirety.

B1. Admission Cycle and Policies

Section B describes the admission cycle and the policies that govern the application, applicant evaluation, and admission of new graduate students.

Although departments have assumed greater responsibility for processing applications in recent years, the Graduate Division monitors whether the minimum application requirements established by the systemwide Academic Senate and the Berkeley Division’s Graduate Council are met and has the ultimate authority to approve or deny admission.  A student is not officially admitted to the university until official notification from the Graduate Dean.

On behalf of the Graduate Council, the Graduate Division sets enrollment targets and the number of admission recommendations that may be forwarded to the Graduate Division. This information is sent annually to each graduate major, usually in late December or early January. The enrollment figure covers both fall and spring semesters, should a program admit for the latter.

B1.1 Admission and Enrollment Allotments

The Graduate Division sets admission and enrollment allotments for every department in order to maintain the graduate enrollment negotiated by the campus and the Office of the President. Graduate enrollment is carefully monitored by the state, and it is vital that departments strictly adhere to their assigned allotments.

How the Graduate Division determines admission and enrollment allotments. Graduate slots are allocated annually to departments based on their success in training students, awarding degrees, and minimizing the number of students who leave without a degree. Each department’s admission allotment is determined by subtracting the number of continuing and returning students (based on historical registration patterns) from the enrollment target and multiplying that number by the “show rate.”

Periodic adjustments of the enrollment target. The Graduate Division’s goal is to maintain an acceptable average of the enrollment target over a span of years. Departments can make special requests to fall short of the target for a given year or to exceed it slightly because of fluctuations in the quality of applicants.

B1.2 Admission Cycle

Nearly all departments accept applicants for the fall semester; some also consider students for spring admission. The online application goes live in early September each year. The application deadlines vary by department. Deadlines for fellowship competition and admission consideration may be set within the range of December 1–January 5. Departments may set the final deadline for admission in the range of December 1 – February 10.

Applicants may only apply to one single degree program or one concurrent degree program per admission term.  An exception is applications for Law degrees, which are handled by the Berkeley Law School.

Any student who was previously registered at Berkeley as a graduate student,  for no matter how long, must apply for readmission, not admission, when he or she wishes to return. (For information on Readmission, see below.)

Basic application requirements.

  1. Official transcripts of all college-level work must be submitted in sealed envelopes as issued by the school. In general, international applicants are required to submit official copies of all academic records. Records must be in the original language and accompanied by English language translations. Specially prepared English versions are not acceptable in lieu of the records in the original language.
  2. Three letters of recommendation are required by most programs. Applicants can request online letters of recommendation through the online application system. A paper copy of a request form to is  available online (www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/app_instructions.shtml).  Hard copies of recommendation letters  should be sent directly to the department.
  3. Waiver of access to departmental evaluations. Applicants who want to waive access to their letters of recommendation must complete the waiver section of the letter of recommendation form, which is included in the application and available online (www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/app_instructions.shtml).
  4. Evidence of English language proficiency. The university does not admit students for the purpose of learning English, and no full-time program of this type is offered during regular semesters. All applicants from countries in which the official language is not English are required to submit official evidence of English language proficiency. This requirement applies to applicants from Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Latin America, the Middle East, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and most European countries.However, applicants who, at the time of application, have already completed at least one year of full-time academic course work with grades of B or better at a U.S. university do not need to take a standardized test. Instead, they must submit an official transcript from the U.S. university. The following courses will not fulfill this requirement: 1) courses in English as a Second Language, 2) courses conducted in a language other than English, 3) courses that will be completed after the application is submitted, and 4) courses of a non-academic nature.If applicants have previously been denied admission to Berkeley on the basis of their English language proficiency, they must submit new test scores that meet the current minimum from one of the standardized tests.

Readmission. For students who were ever formally enrolled at Berkeley and wish to be considered for a new degree program or re-enter their major after a period of withdrawal, an “Application for Readmission” (for which there is a fee payment) and Statement of Legal Residence must be submitted to the Degrees Office (318 Sproul Hall).  If an individual wishes to be considered for a degree program different from his or her previous major or for a new degree goal (e.g., a former master’s student who wishes to return to do a Ph.D.) a “Petition for Change of Major or Degree Goal” along with the Readmission and Legal Residency forms must also be submitted.  The application is downloadable (http://registrar.berkeley.edu/DisplayMedia.aspx?ID=ReadmGrad.pdf) as is the Statement of Legal Residence (http://registrar.berkeley.edu/DisplayMedia.aspx?ID=SLRReadm.pdf).

Students who have been away from the University for more than five years must submit the same documentation to the department as those applying for initial admission in addition to the readmission application. For general Readmission policy, see “Readmission” in the “Registration and Exchange Programs” chapter of this guide (Chapter D, Section D1.9).

B1.3 Evaluation of Applicants

Minimum requirements for admission. The minimum requirements for admission to graduate study at Berkeley are:

  1. a bachelor’s degree or recognized equivalent from an accredited institution;
  2. a satisfactory scholastic average — usually a minimum grade-point average of B or better (3.0);
  3. if the applicant comes from a country or political entity (e.g. Quebec) where English is not the official language, adequate proficiency in English to do graduate work, as evidenced by a TOEFL score of at least 570 on the paper-and-pencil test, 230 on the computer-based test, 68 on the iBT test, or an IELTS Band score of at least 7; and
  4. enough undergraduate training to do graduate work in the given field. Meeting these requirements does not guarantee admission, which is granted on a competitive basis.

Statement of admission procedures. The departments and the Graduate Division should have on file descriptions of the current procedures the department uses to evaluate applicants and calculate admissions decisions. See Appendix 4 in Chapter L, Section 2, of this guide. Departments should send an updated description to the cognizant Associate Dean, in care of the Graduate Admissions Office (318 Sproul Hall #5900), any time their procedures change. Admissions criteria and ranking procedures are subject to review by the Graduate Division.

Departmental evaluation of applicants. Faculty should select applicants for graduate study according to their scholarly and professional potential. Participation by current graduate students in the admission process is at the discretion of the individual units. If students participate in the process, they must be briefed on and abide by the standard rules of confidentiality. A department may choose whatever criteria are appropriate as a basis for its evaluation—undergraduate and graduate grade-point averages, work experience, test scores, letters of recommendation, evidence of past achievements, etc.

B1.4 Redirection of an Application

If review of an application indicates that the background and interests of the applicant are better suited to another graduate program at Berkeley, the application may be redirected. The applicant should be informed of the reason for recommending a redirection, and given two weeks to respond to the suggestion. The applicant must be given the opportunity to decline being considered by a program different from the one to which the original application was made. The file, however, may immediately be forwarded to the other department for review, with notification given to the Graduate Admissions Office of the action taken so that staff may update their files. Applicants so identified are subject to review by the department to which the application was redirected.

Scholars of diverse backgrounds. The Graduate Division subscribes to the goal of providing educational opportunity and increased representation to scholars of diverse backgrounds who will contribute to the level of diversity within their discipline or to the graduate community at large. The admission committee is responsible for reviewing files of applicants with the intent of finding those who have the potential to succeed in the program, but whose application indicates that the student’s academic promise may not be fully recognized by traditional criteria.

Every department should actively seek to develop admission criteria that actively advance educational opportunity and educational diversity.

B1.5 Ranking of Applicants

Rankings provide one of the few objective measures of why a department recommends admission or denial for a particular candidate. The applicant’s rank enables the department and the Graduate Division to be specific about the faculty’s judgment of an individual’s qualifications compared with competing applicants. If a disappointed candidate takes legal action or asks for a detailed explanation, the rankings are essential to the defense of the department’s recommendation. For these reasons, departments must rank all applicants, even those who are clearly unacceptable.

B1.6 Reporting Admission Recommendations to the Graduate Division

To recommend admission for candidates who meet the minimum requirements, departments directly enter the recommendations for admission into the Graduate Admissions database after applicant evaluation. Participants can retrieve the individual records and enter the recommendation information, GPA, and ranking into the database. After each batch of recommendations is entered, the participants run and print a summary report for that batch from a report menu. The Head Graduate Adviser or other authorized person signs the summary report and forwards it with the supporting documentation to the Graduate Division. To recommend admission for an applicant who does not meet minimum requirements, departments complete a Request for Exceptional Admission form or send a departmental memo. The Head Graduate Adviser must sign this form. Exceptional requests may not be signed by a delegate.

The recommendation must specify:

  1. the major and degree to which the applicant is to be admitted;
  2. for domestic applicants, the grade-point average for work completed for the bachelor’s degree, computed on all undergraduate course work completed after the first two years and up to the award of the bachelor’s degree;
  3. the applicant’s ranking; and
  4. the test scores, if appropriate, for TOEFL or IELTS. Attached to the recommendation must be the appropriate official academic records.

Deadlines for admission of applicants who are not citizens or permanent residents of the United States. These applicants must be recommended for admission no later than May 1 for fall semester and October 1 for spring semester in order to allow time for their visas to be processed. After the department recommendation, the Graduate Admissions Office will send the student the official admissions notification and other materials. Admitted students must notify the Graduate Division of their intent by completing the Statement of Intent to Register form online. For students who accept the offer of admission, other forms may be required, including the Statement of Legal Residence (SLR) for determination of residency for tuition purposes, and the Non-Immigrant Information form (NIF) for issuance of immigration documents. These are online forms. The student must complete and submit the “Statement of Intent to Register” along with other forms and financial documents to request a student visa document. BIO can then send the visa document to the student. This process can take as long as six weeks.

Students must then negotiate with U.S. consular officials and their own governments for permission to leave their countries. These negotiations can take weeks or sometimes months. For more information on visas, contact BIO (642-2818, siss@berkeley.edu).

Recommendation for admission with deficiencies in preparation. For applicants whose backgrounds are weak in certain areas of study or who lack specific courses but are otherwise acceptable, departments can recommend admission with minor deficiencies in preparation. The department should outline the deficiencies and a course of action to correct them in a memo to the cognizant Associate Dean before a letter is sent to the student. If Dean approves the admission, the department should inform the applicant in writing, with a copy to the Graduate Division, regarding:

  1. the nature of the deficiencies;
  2. the approximate time needed to resolve them; and
  3. whether the background work can be taken concurrently with graduate study or whether the applicant must complete the course work before beginning the graduate program. Students will not be permitted to continue to register if they do not meet the conditions of their admission within the stated period.

Usually, the classification of admission with deficiencies in preparation is used for students who lack some course work but not the entire undergraduate major. Students with serious deficiencies should be denied admission. Departments should recommend limited status for students who are making a radical change of field and who would need to complete an undergraduate major. Limited status is an undergraduate classification only. For more information on limited status and other options available to students who do not meet the department’s requirements for admission, see  “Special Categories of Students” (section B1.8).

Recommendation for deferred admission. Departments can recommend that an applicant’s admission be deferred one time only if the applicant has been admitted but is unable to enroll on schedule and wants to begin graduate school in a later semester. Departments that admit only for fall semester can recommend deferring an admission only until the next fall semester; those admitting for both semesters can recommend deferral until spring or the following fall.

Deferred admission may be offered only to superior applicants. Applicants admitted by exception may not be deferred. Such applicants must be reviewed and ranked with the current applicant pool, and may be offered admission if they rank above the cutoff point for admission. Under no circumstances can deferred admission be offered to an international applicant who has not yet received a basic degree or whose scholarship, preparation, or English proficiency is questioned by the Graduate Admissions Office.

B1.7 Informing Applicants of Admission or Denial

Notifying applicants who are admitted. If a department recommends admission of a qualified applicant and has not used up its allotment, the Graduate Division will issue an admission notification. Only written notice from the Dean of the Graduate Division constitutes an offer of admission. Departments must not inform successful applicants that they have been admitted until the official notice has been sent by the Graduate Division.

How students accept offers of admission. The Graduate Division does not set a deadline by which graduate students must respond and there is currently no Graduate Division deposit required for those who accept the offer of admission.

Departments may set a response deadline, keeping in mind that UC Berkeley subscribes to the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) policy, “Resolution Regarding Graduate Scholars, Fellows, Trainees, and Assistants,” which states: “Students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support prior to April 15; earlier deadlines for acceptance of such offers violate the intent of this Resolution.” Detailed information on the Resolution can be found on the CGS website. Therefore, if a student is offered admission and financial support, the department may not set a deadline earlier than April 15 by which a student must respond.

Notifying applicants who are denied admission. Submit a list to the Graduate Admissions Office with the applicant’s name, application ID number, and the applicant’s rank. Each page of the list must be signed by the Head Graduate Adviser or by that adviser’s designee, and should be sent to the Graduate Admissions Office as soon as the decisions are known. The department must retain supplemental materials (transcripts, forms, letters of recommendation, etc.) for at least two years.

Rescinding an admission offer. If an academic program needs to consider rescinding an admission offer, it must contact the Director of Graduate Services (642-4971) for further guidance.

B1.8 Special Categories of Students

Graduate programs at Berkeley are structured for full-time students working toward higher degrees. Other students may be admitted only under special circumstances.

Course work only. Course-work-only status permits students who are not working toward a higher degree to enroll in a maximum of two semesters of graduate work. These students must meet the same requirements for admission as those set for other entering graduate students. Course-work-only applicants, therefore, must be evaluated and ranked with all other applicants.

Course-work-only status is appropriate only for students who want to enroll in courses that are not available elsewhere or who want to complete a limited amount of course work for professional advancement. They will not be permitted to enter a degree program at a later date, unless they are current UC employees. Course-work-only status should not be used as a probationary status preliminary to being admitted to a degree program. After two semesters, the registration of course-work-only students will be blocked.

All regular course-work-only students, except UC employees and students in the Education Abroad Program (EAP), count in the departmental admission allotment (see EAP section). Course-work-only students are not eligible for the fellowship competition and may not be appointed as Academic Student Employees or Graduate Student Researchers unless the department first requests an exception that is approved by the cognizant Associate Dean; these exceptions are very rare.

Students working for graduate degrees at another institution. Applicants who want to study at Berkeley before they have completed work toward a graduate degree at another institution may apply for admission to

  1. course-work-only status. If admitted they must register in the usual manner and pay required fees. Such individuals count in the admission allotment, may not later transfer to a Berkeley degree program and are regarded as students.
  2. visiting student researchers. Individuals may qualify as visiting researchers if a) their proposed visit is to conduct research for the purpose of meeting doctoral degree requirements at another university; and b) proposed research is of mutual interest to and endorsed by an academic department, ORU, or other Berkeley campus unit; and c) the appointment term is at least one month and not more than one year in duration. See the Visting Scholars and Postdoctoral Affairs website (https://vspa.berkeley.edu) or contact its director at 643-9681; vspa@berkeley.edu, for more information.

Limited status. The limited status undergraduate program allows a student, who has received a recognized undergraduate degree with a record of good scholarship (an overall grade-point average of at least 3.3) the opportunity to pursue course work in a field unrelated to any prior degrees for a specific and clearly defined purpose (usually preparation for graduate school). The program is for undergraduate course work only, for two regular terms, and requires full-time attendance. Only the Colleges of Chemistry, Natural Resources, and Engineering consider admitting students in limited status. Use of limited status as a means of raising a student’s scholarship average is not permitted.

Information about this program, application procedures, and deadlines, is available in the Office of Undergraduate Admission and Relations with Schools (110 Sproul Hall, 642-3175).

Students not eligible for the limited status program may consider concurrent enrollment through University Extension (642-4111) as an alternative.

Restrictions of limited status. Students on limited status are not allowed to take graduate courses (200 series). Any courses they complete while on limited status do not satisfy subject or residence requirements for an advanced degree or credential.

Students who complete a program in limited status are not automatically transferred to graduate standing. They must submit an application for admission and meet the deadline for fall or spring admission. They are evaluated for graduate admission on the same basis as other applicants.

Part-time graduate students. Part-time graduate students can be admitted only to those degree programs (e.g., the Evening/Weekend MBA) specifically approved for part-time students.

Ad hoc interdisciplinary doctoral programs. The Graduate Council has established a procedure by which students may elect to pursue an interdisciplinary major of their own design. Only students who have completed at least two semesters of a doctoral program at Berkeley with a superior academic record may be considered for an individual interdisciplinary major. For further information, students should contact the Graduate Degrees Office (642-7330, degrees@berkeley.edu).

Duplication of degrees. Departments may consider students for an additional academic master’s or professional master’s degree if the second degree is in a distinctly different field.

Applicants admitted to a doctoral program that requires a master’s degree to be earned at Berkeley as a prerequisite (even though the applicant already has a master’s degree from another institution in the same or a closely allied field of study) will be permitted to study for a second master’s degree.

The Graduate Division will admit students for a second doctoral degree only if they meet the following guidelines:

  1. Applicants with doctoral degrees may be admitted for an additional doctoral degree only if that degree program is in a general area of knowledge distinctly different from the field in which they earned their original degree. For example, a physics Ph.D. could be admitted to a doctoral degree program in music or history; however, a student with a doctoral degree in mathematics would  not be permitted to add a Ph.D. in statistics. The Graduate Council views academic degrees as evidence of broad research training, not as vocational training certificates; therefore, applicants with academic graduate degrees should be able to take up new subject matter on a serious level without undertaking a graduate program unless the fields are completely dissimilar.
  2. Applicants who hold the Ph.D. degree may be admitted to a professional doctorate or professional master’s degree program if there is no duplication of training involved.
  3. If a department wants to recommend admissions to a second Ph.D. or to a lesser degree, the head Graduate Advisor may request an exception to this policy in a written form.

Education Abroad Program Reciprocity. In 1980, the Education Abroad Program (EAP) inaugurated a series of non-degree/no-fee direct exchange programs with a number of universities abroad. Prospective participants apply initially to the University of California Study Center located at their home institution abroad. The individual study centers select the successful participants and submit applications for those students to the Systemwide EAP office located in Santa Barbara. The Systemwide EAP office will send the application materials directly to the individual departments. Students seeking admission in this category can be identified by a red stamp “University of California, Education Abroad Program Reciprocity Application” on the Graduate Admissions application. If your department requires a departmental application, please send one directly to the applicant.

EAP Reciprocity applicants are not required to pay the application fee and will be seeking admission to course-work-only status (although they will not count, unlike other course-work-only students, against the department’s admissions allotment). Applicants must meet all normal University requirements for admission, including an appropriate basic degree, an acceptable GPA, and English language proficiency. If a department has a GRE requirement, it should notify the EAP applicants at once. Because EAP applicants are not being considered for admission to degree programs, the Graduate Admissions Office does not require that they submit official copies of their academic records from abroad since records certified by the Systemwide EAP Coordinator are acceptable. However, applicants will be required to submit official transcripts from U.S. colleges or universities in sealed envelopes.

The applications of EAP applicants should be reviewed, and they should be recommended for admission or denial following procedures used for all other international applicants. The Office of the President will not include them in the campus FTE enrollments, and applicants recommended for admission will not count in the department’s allotment, as stated above. However, departments must report the rank for all EAP applicants recommended for admission. Given this, they may wish to compare the applicants to each other as a group and rank those admitted numerically, i.e., EAP-1, EAP-2, and so on. Final decisions should be made no later than June 1, particularly for those denied admission, to enable the Systemwide EAP Coordinator to place them at another UC campus. EAP applicants may not be deferred because their initial selection is governed by their home institution abroad.

Students enrolled in this category do not pay nonresident tuition or educational fees. Although the campuses do not receive instructional support resources from the state or the Office of the President for these students, the Education Abroad Program transfers an amount equivalent to the registration fee to the receiving campus.

Students who enroll in this category are not eligible to enter a degree program upon completion of their course work, and their registration is limited to a maximum of one year. Upon completion of two semesters, their registration will automatically be blocked. Very rarely is an exception to the rule ever granted. Please contact the Director of Graduate Services for more information (642-4971).

B1.9 Documentation of Admission Decisions

Admission records, including ranking procedures for each cohort, should be retained for those admitted and denied for at least two admission cycles. Such records might include letters of recommendation, documents used by faculty evaluators, computations of applicant scores or ranks, etc. The Graduate Division can compile most of the statistical information needed to respond to legal investigations, but departments alone have information on the particular strengths and weaknesses of individual applicants, such as the evaluation of letters of recommendation and the results of interviews. Federal agencies, for example, require the University to summarize the qualifications of successful as well as unsuccessful applicants in order to demonstrate that the complainant’s qualifications were below the level of those admitted for a particular program and semester, according to the department’s criteria for evaluation. Keeping admission data for two or more years may seem cumbersome for departments, but it is relatively cheap insurance against the need to reconstruct admission decisions for a year’s worth of applicants.

B2. Applicant Records

Release of applicant information. According to California’s Information Practices Act of 1977 (IPA), the Graduate Admissions Office will release information on an applicant’s status only to the applicant. If an applicant would like anyone else to have access to that information, the applicant should complete the on-line section of the graduate application for admission that grants permission to release information to an alternate contact. An applicant may also submit a written statement giving permission and the person’s name. The Graduate Division’s policy, based on IPA guidelines, is to hold in confidence all information provided in application materials except the names of applicants, and the departments to which they applied, which is considered public information. If an applicant does not wish these to be released, a written request to withhold that information should be included with the application, and the department should be informed as well.

Rights of applicants. The Information Practices Act governs the disclosure of information from applicant and other non-student records. Under this act, letters and statements of recommendation and admission committee appraisals are considered “personal information.” The IPA requires disclosure of personal information to the individual about whom the personal information pertains. This means that, absent a waiver, an applicant would legally have access to letters of recommendation and admission committee evaluation material.

Applicants who wish to waive access to their letters of recommendation must complete the waiver section in the letter of recommendation form, which is included in the application booklet and available online (www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/app_instructions.shtml). This form should be submitted with their letters of recommendation. If an applicant has not waived the right of access, then the department must disclose the letters of recommendation to the individual upon request, regardless of where the letters are filed.

Departments may wish to consider including a waiver of access rights form specifically for those comments and evaluations. A sample form for this purpose is included below. Any such waiver would have to be voluntary and could not be required as a condition of admission or review.

For more information on this policy, call the Graduate Admissions Office (642-7405).

B2.1 Registration of New Graduate Students

Under the Tele-BEARS registration system, most new graduate students receive their registration information from their departments when they arrive on campus. The Graduate Admissions Office will block the registration of entering students who have not yet submitted required proof of degree, academic records, or test scores; however, students who received bachelor’s degrees the preceding spring or summer have until the fourth week of the fall semester to submit proof of their degrees. For further information on admission status, departments may check the the Graduate Admissions Office database, or students may call the Graduate Admissions Office (642-7405). For more information on how new graduate students register, see the “Registration and Exchange Programs” (Section D1.2).