Social Sciences

Growing up in San Francisco's West Portal neighborhood, Christopher Ying had vague plans to become a lawyer and began prepping by joining the speech, debate and mock trial teams at Lowell High School.

But he credits the University of California, Berkeley, and the opportunities it provided — in particular, to report and edit for the Daily Californian and to tutor inmates at the former San Quentin State Prison — with helping him find his true passion in the legal field: giving a voice to marginalized members of society.

Those only-at-Berkeley experiences — plus a 3.981 grade...

Chaka Tellem is a class of 2023 UC Berkeley graduate who studied political economy with minors in public policy and race & law. Tellem will attend law school in the fall of 2024. His passion for advocacy and law grew from his formative years in Dallas and Los Angeles. Tellem was the ASUC (Associated Students of the University of California) student body president for two years, from 2021 to 2023. He is currently...

Growing up in the East Bay, Michael Cerda-Jara faced adversity throughout his hardscrabble childhood. He joined a gang at the age of 13. He got into fights in school and faced expulsion multiple times.

He was lost academically because of the trouble he got into and lack of support from those around him, including his teachers. One of them, his 6th-grade teacher, once told him he “wasn’t going to end up anywhere except for prison or dead.” No one expected Cerda-Jara to amount to much and he had low expectations for himself. ...