Criminology is a major students expect to find everywhere and then cannot find at all. Search the UC system and you get a handful of results that mostly are not criminology.
The short version: one UC campus has a real criminology major, two others have Legal Studies that gets mistaken for it, and the rest have nothing. Here is what each one actually is.
Which UCs actually have criminology?
One. UC Irvine's Criminology, Law and Society, B.A. is the only criminology major in the UC system, and it is a genuinely strong one, housed in UCI's School of Social Ecology.
- Has criminology: UC Irvine only.
- Has Legal Studies, which is related but different: UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.
- Has neither: UCLA, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside and UC Merced, though all offer Sociology and most offer Political Science.
So "does UCLA have criminal justice?"
No. UCLA has no criminology or criminal justice major, and this is the most common dead end in this search. Students who want the field at UCLA end up in Sociology, which does cover crime and deviance but as one topic among many rather than the spine of the degree.
Berkeley and Santa Cruz are the more subtle mix-up. Legal Studies is not criminology. Legal Studies looks at law as an institution: how it is made, interpreted and applied. Criminology looks at crime, policing and punishment as social phenomena and leans much harder on statistics and research methods. If you want to work in policing, corrections, forensics or crime policy, criminology is the closer fit. If you are aiming at law school, Legal Studies is the more natural home, though neither major is required for it.
Can you actually get into UC Irvine criminology?
Criminology, Law and Society is one of UC Irvine's larger social-science majors, which works in a transfer applicant's favor. It is a more realistic target than the campus's nursing or business programs, and UCI takes a large transfer class overall.
What it does expect is the social-science prep done properly, especially statistics and research methods, which are the courses transfer applicants most often leave until the last semester and then find full. Statistics in particular is a bottleneck course at most community colleges. Get it early.
If you are weighing this against a psychology-style path, it is worth comparing the actual course sequence from your community college to UC Irvine, since the two share much of their lower-division prep and the overlap decides how many campuses you can keep on your list.
What this means for your transfer plan
If criminology is the goal, UC Irvine is your only UC, so build a list rather than a single bet. Roughly 18 CSU campuses offer criminal justice or criminology, several with direct pipelines into local agencies, and those programs are considerably easier to transfer into.
If the real goal is law school, stop optimizing your major. Law schools care about GPA and LSAT, not whether your degree said criminology. Pick the major you will get the best grades in, at the campus you most want to attend, and put the saved energy into the LSAT.
Related: Which UCs have social work · UC transfer acceptance rates by major · Which UCs have journalism programs · DVC to UC Berkeley psychology prerequisites
