Undergraduate Admissions

As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design (CED), you can major in architecture, landscape architecture, urban studies, or sustainable environmental design, with choices for additional study that are diverse, rich, and that lay the groundwork for a variety of professional directions when you graduate. There are also undergraduate research opportunities that can start you on your way to an advanced degree.

As a student here, you will learn strategizing, problem-solving, and critical thinking — skills that make you valuable in design, planning, and related professions. Our programs prepare you for the world of the 21st century, where everything changes quickly, and where those who have the most diverse skills have the best chance of moving ahead, gaining opportunities, and making a difference.

Welcome to the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley’s home for built environment design theory and research, innovation, and practice!

CED puts you at the forefront of creating a sustainable future. Today’s students have inherited unprecedented global and environmental challenges that could not have been foreseen when the college was founded in 1959. As a student, these challenges require you to learn radically new ways to fashion buildings and neighborhoods, cities and regions, and landscapes that will harbor our diverse ways of life — challenges CED has shaped its current core curriculum to meet.

CED's mission is to produce creative and skilled graduates who craft places, cities, and regions that are ecologically sustainable and resilient, prosperous and fair, healthy and beautiful. We offer undergraduate majors in architecture, landscape architecture, urban studies, and sustainable environmental design.

Among the nation’s top environmental design schools, CED is also one of the world’s most distinguished laboratories for experimentation, research, and intellectual synergy. The first school to combine the disciplines of architecture, planning, and landscape architecture into a single college, CED leads the way toward an integrated approach to analyzing, understanding, and designing what is known as "our built environment." CED’s curriculum also stresses that environmental design is inseparable from its social, political-economic, and cultural contexts.

A common thread linking CED’s programs is the studio experience, involving deep immersion in theory, technology, and real-time practice. In studio, fledgling designers like you take flight, becoming visual thinkers, critical observers, and systems scientists, often working with faculty and classmates from across the college’s three departments — Architecture, City and Regional Planning, and Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. This intense, interactive learning arena is the hallmark of a CED education, offering you an unparalleled learning environment at the nation’s top public university.

View our galleries of student work to see what you can do at CED.

Our 25,000 alumni have been successful in many different careers. As a CED graduate, you can pursue fields as diverse as medicine, law, design, construction, consulting, or teaching. Many of our students have gone on to graduate school — studying city planning, architecture, or urban public health. Others are engaged in the practice of urban design, public service, or business-oriented careers such as real-estate development. Learn more about CED's distinguished alumni.

To support your career exploration process every step of the way, we provide personalized career counseling, a yearly CED Career Fair, and a wide variety of professional development workshops on topics such as licensure, internships, and applying for graduate school. Our alumni mentorship program offers you opportunities to develop a better understanding of the environmental design field by working with CED graduates who are practicing professionals.

Interested in learning more about CED?

Whether you apply as a freshman or a transfer student, and whether you are interested in architecture, landscape architecture ,or urban studies, you will find a home at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design.

We look forward to meeting you soon in Bauer Wurster Hall.

— Office of Undergraduate Advising, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley