Dear Student:

The German Undergraduate Program provides you with the knowledge, experience, language fluency, and analytical skills necessary to enter the academic world or the world of international law or global business. Whether your goals are to attend graduate school or to achieve the highest level of success in your professional careers, the German program offers a large selection of courses in literature, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, history, film, and business, along with opportunities to study abroad, all of which will provide you with the skill-set needed to achieve your individual goals.

Our students are challenged to gain fluency in the German language, read major works by Kafka, Freud, and Nietzsche (among many others) in their original language, and to venture abroad to German speaking countries to embrace new cultures. This will give you the cultural competence and the necessary edge in today’s global marketplace.

If you major or double-major in German at Berkeley, you will enjoy an atmosphere that resembles that of an Ivy League setting. You will have the opportunity to study with world-famous professors and highly qualified Graduate Student Instructors.

Our Department offers an Honors Program and gives awards to our best students. We provide opportunities for practicing German outside the classroom. Check our events calendar for lecture, colloquia, film screening, and conference dates.

N.B.: Undergraduate students apply for admission to the University of California and NOT to the Department of German. Students can declare a German Major at any time but no later than the end of their junior year. The German major program can be completed in two years. The department does not limit the number of majors it admits to the program.

If you have further questions, please contact the undergraduate assistant, Nadia Samadi germanic@berkeley.edu, call her at (510) 642-7445, or pay her a visit in her office at 5311 Dwinelle Hall (Level E). For all academic questions, please see the faculty undergraduate adviser, Professor Karen Feldman, at 5325 Dwinelle (tel.: 642-2973, email: kfeldman@berkeley.edu).