Communication is one of the most misunderstood majors in the UC system. Students assume it is widely available and easy to get into. It is moderately available and, at the campuses everyone wants, genuinely competitive.
The short version: six campuses offer it, one of them calls it something else, and two are impacted. Here is what is actually there.
Which UCs actually have communication?
Six of nine, counting Berkeley's equivalent.
- UCLA: Communication, B.A. Large, well known, and impacted.
- UC Santa Barbara: Communication, B.A. One of the strongest research departments in the field, and also impacted.
- UC San Diego: Communication, B.A., plus a Media Industries and Communication track.
- UC Davis: Communication, A.B., with a notably quantitative and social-scientific emphasis.
- UC Merced: Communication and Media, B.A., with emphases including media production and linguistics. Several of these carry recent transfer start terms, so confirm the term for your application year.
- UC Berkeley: Media Studies, B.A. and Rhetoric, B.A. Berkeley has no major called Communication, and Media Studies is the closest match.
- No communication major: UC Irvine, UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz, though UC Irvine and UCSC both have film and media studies.
So "does Berkeley have communications?"
Not under that name. Berkeley's Media Studies is an interdisciplinary major covering media institutions, technology and culture. Rhetoric is more theoretical still, concerned with argument, language and interpretation.
Both are excellent and neither is a professional communications degree. If you are expecting public relations, strategic communication or media production coursework, Berkeley is not that, and neither is most of this list.
Communication is not journalism, and not PR
Worth being blunt, because this is the most common disappointment in the major.
Communication at the UCs is a social science. You study how media works, how messages move, and what effects they have, with statistics and research methods attached. Davis and UCSB in particular are quantitative.
It is not a training program for public relations, advertising, or reporting. Those skills are taught at CSU campuses with professional communication and journalism programs, and at UC Irvine in the case of journalism.
That does not make it a bad major. Communication graduates go into marketing, tech, media, law and policy constantly. But go in knowing you are getting an analytical degree, and get the practical experience through internships and student media alongside it.
Can you actually get in?
Impaction is the thing to plan around. Communication at UCLA and UCSB is consistently among the more competitive social-science majors on those campuses, precisely because it is popular and the departments are not large enough to absorb the demand. Admitted transfer GPAs there run higher than for many less popular majors at the same schools.
UC San Diego, Davis and Merced are more accessible, and Berkeley's Media Studies is competitive in the way everything at Berkeley is.
The prerequisite that catches people is statistics. Most of these departments require it, some want a specific version, and it is a bottleneck course at community colleges. Students who leave it late find sections full and lose a cycle.
What this means for your transfer plan
Take statistics early and confirm which version each campus wants, since they are not interchangeable. Spread your list across impaction levels rather than applying only to UCLA and UCSB. And if what you actually want is to make media rather than study it, look seriously at the CSU professional programs, because that is where those skills are taught.
Related: Which UCs have journalism programs · Which UCs have film programs · Majors no UC offers · UC transfer acceptance rates by major
