Undergraduate Admissions
Welcome!
Welcome to the College of Environmental Design! We’re excited you are considering joining our community. As the #1 public university in the nation for architecture and the built environment, the College of Environmental Design upholds UC Berkeley’s public mission: enhancing society and the greater good through research and design and providing pathways to success for students from all backgrounds.
CED offers the advantages of a small college experience paired with the opportunities available at a large public research university. At CED, you can earn a bachelor of arts degree in architecture, landscape architecture, urban studies, or sustainable environmental design, with choices for additional study that lay the groundwork for a variety of professional directions. These liberal arts degrees arm you with skills in problem-solving and strategic and critical thinking, so you’ll be prepared for whatever the future has in store. Our graduates find success in a range of fields, using their CED educations to make a difference.
CED Undergraduate Majors
Architecture
As an architecture major, you’ll join a community committed to collaboration, inquiry, experimentation, and design excellence. The major offers a broad, humanist introduction to the field of architecture, including theories of design, digital design and fabrication, the histories of places and peoples, and sustainable design practices. In this rigorous, hands-on, studio-based program, you’ll visit project sites, render your designs using the latest software, build models in the Fabrication Shop, discuss your work and ideas with local design professionals, and learn how transforming the built environment can be a catalyst for social change.
Landscape Architecture
As a landscape architecture major, you’ll learn both the art of creating beautiful places as well as how to think critically about landscapes from the perspectives of ecology, climate resilience, social impact, and cultural meaning. The curriculum offers opportunities to engage with a range of landscapes, from community gardens to downtown plazas to wilderness areas, and encourages you to reimagine how collective public landscapes can contribute to the common good. In addition to creating in design studios and attending classroom lectures and seminars, you’ll wade through streams, survey urban vegetation, observe construction sites, and sketch Bay Area landscapes.
Urban Studies
As an urban studies major, you’ll learn to lead change for better urban futures. The interdisciplinary curriculum introduces you to key issues in urban history, transportation planning, and housing. Lecture and seminar classes, plus a capstone experience, focus on cities as sites of economic development, civic participation, social transformation, and cultural imagination. At a time when the world is more urban than in other era in human history, you’ll graduate with tools and methods to make our cities more humane and resilient.
Sustainable Environmental Design
As an SED major, you’ll delve deeply into policy and design solutions that meet today’s environmental challenges, including pollution, food waste, carbon emissions, and land inequities. Taking courses across disciplines enables you to develop a critical understanding of how sustainable environments emerge from the intersection of technology, design, economics, policy, and societal change. You’ll graduate with a multifaceted understanding of how to drive systems change to create resilient, resource-efficient, healthy, and socially just cities and metropolitan regions.
How to Apply
Applications to the College of Environmental Design are made through UC Berkeley’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Applications are available beginning August 1 and may be submitted beginning October 1. The final deadline to submit your application is November 30. A portfolio is NOT required for admission to CED.
Getting Started
The CED Office of Undergraduate Advising and the CED Admissions Ambassadors hold virtual and in-person information sessions throughout the year for prospective students. Meet undergraduate advisers and current students, learn more about the college, majors, and admissions criteria, and get tips on maximizing your chances for admission.
- Talk with a CED student! Schedule an in-person, phone, or online video conference or chat with one of our undergraduate Admissions Ambassadors.
- Attend a prospective student information session in person or online.
- Come see us on Cal Day, UC Berkeley’s annual open house.
- Follow CED’s Instagram.
- Explore your many options with a CED undergraduate adviser.
CED Ambassadors
CED’s Admissions Ambassadors are happy to help you learn more via:
- Virtual Presentations
- One-on-one conversations
- Webinars, phone calls, email exchanges
- Student panel discussions about the student experience at CED
Admissions Requirements
All prospective students must meet the minimum eligibility requirements defined by the University of California. Transfer students must also complete all of the CED’s lower-division requirements to be eligible for consideration.
First-Year Applicants
Incoming first-year students, including international applicants, can see a detailed list of admissions requirements on the UC Berkeley Office of Undergraduate Admissions website.
Transfer Applicants
We welcome applications from transfer students. Transfer students are admitted at the junior level only (90 quarter units or 60 semester units of transferable college credit) and must have completed all general education requirements and all lower-division major requirements. International transfer applicants should consult the UC Berkeley Office of Undergraduate Admissions website for additional information.
International Applicants
We welcome applications from international students. See Berkeley International Office for more information.
Resources
If you have taken community college courses, check our Articulation page to find out if your course credit will satisfy CED requirements.
Professional Resources
Whether you apply as a first-year or a transfer student, and whether you are interested in architecture, landscape architecture, or urban studies, you will find a home at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. We look forward to meeting you soon in Bauer Wurster Hall!