University of California, Berkeley AI Policy for College Applications

UC Berkeley follows the UC system-wide admissions policy. The UC Statement of Integrity (signed by all applicants in the UC Application) explicitly allows generative AI for readability and editing assistance but requires content and final written text to be the applicant's own. UC officials have stated that completely AI-generated answers are equivalent to academic dishonesty and can result in disqualification. UC runs PIQ responses through plagiarism detection software. The admissions.berkeley.edu site itself does not have a separate Berkeley-specific AI policy page; the policy comes through the UC system application. The previous URL for the UC Statement of Integrity page on admissions.berkeley.edu (admissions.berkeley.edu/apply/uc-statement-integrity/) now returns a 404, suggesting the site was reorganized. Berkeley Law's LL.M. and J.S.D. programs explicitly prohibit all AI assistance in personal statements; that rule is scoped to those degrees and its source is the LL.M. application checklist. It does NOT govern J.D. applicants. Re-verified 2026-07-29: Berkeley Law's 'Ready to Apply' J.D. instructions and J.D. personal-statement page publish no admissions AI rule, so an explicit L0 J.D. row was added and the LL.M./J.S.D. row was renamed to make its degree scope unmissable. The iSchool MIMS program states essays must be written by the candidate but does not explicitly mention AI. Reclassified from L1 to L2 because the UC Statement of Integrity specifically allows AI for editing/readability but prohibits AI-generated content, which maps to L2 rather than L1. Upgraded disclosure from D2 to D3 because the Statement of Integrity is a signed attestation explicitly restricting AI use with consequences.