The University of California, Berkeley, is a public institution located in Berkeley, California, United States. It was established in 1868 by merging the private College of California with the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland. The university occupies a 1,232 acre campus overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Berkeley is the flagship institution of the 10 campus University of California system and one of only two UC campuses operating on a semester calendar, the other being UC Merced. UC Berkeley has a total undergraduate enrollment of 25,774.

Berkeley is the oldest institution in the UC system and offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs through its 14 schools and colleges. The school's graduate programs include the highly ranked Haas School of Business, Graduate School of Education, College of Engineering, School of Law, School of Social Welfare, School of Public Health and Goldman School of Public Policy. Other graduate programs include the School of Optometry, Graduate School of Journalism and College of Environmental Design. 26 of Berkeley alumni are Nobel laureates. Other notable alumni include former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, former President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 22nd United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley and actor John Cho of the "Harold and Kumar" films. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project during WWII to develop the atomic bomb, was a physicist and professor at Berkeley.

Berkeley is well known as a hub of liberal thinking among students. It's the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement—a 1964 student protest at Berkeley in response to the U.S. Administration's attempt to remove student political groups from campus. The movement gained widespread national support.

Berkeley guarantees two years of housing for incoming freshmen in a number of residence halls throughout campus. Students can choose from more than 1,200 student organizations on campus as well as 55 fraternity and sorority chapters. Berkeley's California Golden Bears compete in the Pac-12 Conference and are known for their traditional arch rivalry with Stanford.