The University of California was chartered in 1868 and its flagship campus – envisioned as a “City of Learning” – was established at Berkeley, on San Francisco Bay. Today the world’s premier public university and a wellspring of innovation, UC Berkeley occupies a 1,232 acre campus with a sylvan 178-acre central core. It is the oldest of ten university of California campuses.

With its mission of teaching, research, and public service, UC Berkeley, or Cal as it is known to alumni, is one of the world’s most distinguished institutions of higher education. It is renowned for the excellence of its faculty and students, the scope of its research and publications, the size and quality of its library collections, and the excellence of its laboratory and educational facilities.

In recognition of broad and deep excellence, respected sources have repeatedly ranked UC Berkeley at or near the top in fields ranging from engineering and the "hard" sciences to the social sciences, arts, and humanities. The National Research Council, in the most recent version of its highly regarded report on U.S. public and private universities, ranked Berkeley number one nationally in the number of campus graduate programs (48 out of 52) among the top 10 in their fields.

Berkeley ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top 10 in their fields. There are 7 Nobel Laureates, 32 MacArthur Fellows, and 4 Pulitzer Prize winners among its active faculty.