Application Requirements & Instruction

Strong undergraduate preparation for neuroscience includes at least one year of college level coursework in one of the following disciplines: biology, physics, chemistry, calculus, or engineering. Additional coursework in cognitive science, psychology, biophysics, or neurobiology is advisable. Applicants should describe their research experience in the Statement of Purpose.

A bachelor’s degree or equivalent from an accredited institution with a minimum GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale is required for admissions. In addition, the Neuroscience PhD Program requires applicants to have at least two years of laboratory research experience. 

Upload unofficial transcripts (ie, scanned copies) to your application. International applicants should also upload scanned copies of their degree certificate(s). If admitted to the program, you will be required to send official documents to UC Berkeley after accepting your admission offer.

Unofficial transcripts must include:

• your name
• institution name
• course names and grades by term
• degree awarded and conferred date, if applicable
• transcript legend
• any academic comments that would appear on an official transcript

If your GPA is on a 4.0 scale, please complete fields in the "Grade Point Averages (GPA)" section of the application:

• Cumulative Undergraduate GPA (required), Advanced Undergraduate GPA (required), and Cumulative Graduate GPA (if applicable).

Do NOT include: Major GPA or GPA for intended field of study

Your Cumulative Undergraduate GPA should be displayed on the transcript you upload as part of your application. Please upload a calculation worksheet for your Advanced Undergraduate GPA if it is not noted on your transcript and you need to make the calulations yourself. Advanced Undergraduate GPA is all courses completed after the second year. You may make a copy of this GPA Calculation worksheet to use, or you may search and use an on-line GPA calculator found with a Google search.

If your GPA is not based on a 4-point scale, please do not convert to this scale. Instead, complete the “Other Scale GPA” field on the application using the scale used at your institution and be sure to upload documentation of their grading system (usually this is part of your transcript, but upload a separate document if needed). Do NOT complete the other GPA fields on the "Grades" page of the application.

You are required to submit three (3) letters of recommendation. Letters should be from individuals who have supervised work in a laboratory, research, or academic setting and can comment on intellectual ability, creativity, scientific leadership skills, and scholarly potential.  

You will be asked to submit the names and email addresses of your three recommenders as part of the online application. Doing so will inititate a request to your recommender for a letter and they will submit their letters online directly to your application using a unique link sent to them. You do not have to wait until letters of recommendation are submitted in order to submit your online application - be sure to submit your application on time regardless of your letter status. It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure that recommenders submit their letters by the application deadline. 

More information about Letters of Recommendation can be found on Graduate Division's Admission FAQs page(link is external).

Employment History: Optional if you include this information on your CV

If your emplyment history including organization name, country, city, state, dates of employment, position title, hours per week, and description for each are included on your CV, then you do not need to enter them separately here in the application.

You will be asked to enter your test scores into the online application and to submit official test scores directly to UC Berkeley for verification. 

Evidence of English language Proficiency: All applicants who have completed a basic degree in a country/region in which the official language is not English are required to submit official evidence of English language proficiency: the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Additional information including allowable exemptions can be found on the Graduate Admissions website.

Graduate Record Exam (GRE): Not required.

You will prepare and submit two essays as part of your application: the Statement of Purpose (SOP) and the Personal History Statement (PHS). Please also see information about these statements on the Graduate Admissions page "Writing Your Statements". Below is additional information from the Neuroscience PhD Program.

Statement of Purpose: In the SOP, you should describe your motivation, preparation, and aptitude for PhD study in neuroscience. Please include a description of your prior research experience and accomplishments, with enough detail (for at least one project) to illustrate how you think scientifically. You should also discuss your future research interests and career goals and why you think Berkeley is a good fit for your PhD training. The SOP should be 2-3 double-spaced pages.

Personal History Statement: In the PHS, you should describe how your personal background and experiences influenced your decision to pursue a graduate degree. The PHS should not duplicate the SOP but should provide broader context on your personal story and goals. This may include how you overcame barriers to access higher education, how you have come to understand the barriers faced by others, your service to advance equitable access to education for under-represented groups, research you may have done that focuses on underserved populations or related issues of inequality, your leadership roles in such groups, and/or your plans in graduate school and your future career to address societal issues. Any extenuating circumstances that may have affected your academics can also be addressed here. The PHS should be 1-3 double-spaced pages.

The Neuroscience program page will be added to your application after you select "Neuroscience PhD" from the dropdown on the Instructions page of the graduate application. The fields on this program page are required and contain the following sections.

Study Emphasis/Research Interest section: Select the primary and secondary areas of neuroscience that best describe the research you intend to pursue within our program should you be admitted. Please see area of neuroscience descriptions. 

Faculty Advisor section: From the list of faculty provided in the application, select the names of at least 6 and up to 8 faculty members with whom you are interested in conducting research within the Neuroscience PhD Program. Please select faculty in rank order from most interested (#1) to least interested (#8). See list of program faculty with links to their websites. All applicants including those for the Direct Admit program must complete this section.

General and Direct Admissions section: Please read about General and Direct Admissions (DA) on our website before answering these questions. Only students who have been invited by a faculty member to apply by this route may apply to the direct admit program.

• If you have been invited to apply via Direct Admission by an eligible faculty member, then select "I am applying for the Direct Admit (no rotations) program to a specific faculty lab" and then enter the name of the faculty member who invited you. You will automatically also be considered for the general admission program.
• If you have NOT been invited to apply via Direct Admission, then select "I am applying only for the general admissions (rotations) program" and do not enter a faculty name in the following field.

Survey section: Let us know how you heard about our program and if you have participated in any summer internship programs (internship name, institution, and start-end dates).

Potential Review by MCB, Psychology, or Vision Science Graduate Programs: In this section you may indicate if you are interested in having your application transferred to one of these programs if the Neuroscience PhD Program is not able to offer you admission. Please note that application transfer is not guaranteed and will only occur for select applicants.

The Neuroscience PhD Program requires applicants to have at least two years of laboratory research experience. We do not consider courses with a laboratory component (i.e. lab classes) as research experience.

Research Experiences: Optional if you include this information on your CV.

Add information for up to 3 experiences in research by clicking the "Add New" link: institution/employer, mentor/supervisor, postiion title, employment dates, hours per week. If these research experiences and all information requested for each are included on your CV, then you do not need to enter them separately here in the application.

Total Number of Months of Full-Time Research: You must complete this section.

Please calculate the total number of MONTHS of full-time reseach experience you have had. Do not include lab classes in the tally. For each experience, convert part-time hours into months by dividing the total number of months (M) by 40 and multiplying by the number of hours worked per week (hrs/wk).

Formula: (M/40)*hrs/wk = months of full-time research

Sum this across all your research expereinces to calculate the total months of full-time research and enter this sum into the appropriate field in the application.

Acadecmic or Professional History (Resume/CV): We require you to upload your Resume/CV here. In addition to your work history, you may like to list on your CV any publications, presentations, honors, awards, fellowships, summer research opportunities, traineeships, prizes, participation in student organizations, etc. 

If you include your employment history and research experience in your CV, then there is no need to individually include these expereinces again in the Employment History and Research Experience sections of the online application. 

Sampling of Relevant Written Work: Optional.

Publications and Presentations: Optional if you've already included this information on your CV.

Honors and Awards: Optional if you've already included this information on your CV.

Website for published work: Optional.

Survey: Please complete this question to let us know which other institutions you have applied and the major/department.

The application fee must be paid in order for your application to be reviewed. The application fee is $135 if you are a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident, and $155 otherwise. 

U.S. citizen and permanent residents may qualify for application fee waivers. Please visit the the fee waiver website(link is external)(link is external) for more information. Fee waivers are administered by UC Berkeley Graduate Admissions and not by the Neuroscience PhD Program. Please direct all fee waiver questions to gradadm@berkeley.edu.

You will submit the application fee through your status page after you have submitted your application. If you applied for a fee waiver, fee waiver decisions will be posted on your status page after submission of the application. Do not submit your application late.

The application payment system requires that you enter the exact billing address information on the credit card statement (no abbreviations, extra spaces, etc.) including the name, address, and security code. Please see below if your payment status is "pending" and/or your credit card is being declined:

1. Check with your bank to make sure that the address information you are entering is exact.

2. Try a different credit card.

3. The charges you are seeing for the payments that did not go through are authorization holds from the bank. They will disappear in a few days once the charges are declined. If they do not disappear, you will need to contact your bank to have them removed.

Additional payment question or payment issues should be directed to gradadm@berkeley.edu.