UC Davis welcomes international student applications from around the globe. The campus is home to more than 4,500 international undergraduates, a reflection of our diverse community of students and scholars.
As an international student, you can apply for admission as a freshman or a transfer. You are a freshman applicant if you will be completing or have completed secondary school, and have not enrolled at any college or university. You are a transfer applicant if you have enrolled in and completed any college or university work after leaving or completing secondary school. (You may not disregard your post-secondary record and apply as a freshman.)
Before you begin the admission process, make sure that you meet the UC admission requirements for either freshman or transfer applicants. Please note that meeting these requirements does not guarantee admission to UC Davis.
To be considered for freshman admission, you must complete secondary school, earn good grades in academic subjects, and receive a certificate of completion that grants you admission to university-level studies in your country.
Transfer applicants are required to report all post-secondary, college and university coursework in the UC application, whether or not coursework will be transferable or in a subject unrelated to their current studies. However, no final decisions on your transfer credits be made until you are officially enrolled at UC Davis.
Please be aware of special requirements for specific countries and educational systems.
International students must meet the same admission requirements and will be included in the same selection process as students from the United States. If you have attended both non-U.S. and U.S. schools, both your non-U.S. and U.S. courses and grades will be considered. You may also be required to demonstrate English proficiency, depending on the language of instruction at your secondary schools and the number of years you have been instructed in English or another language prior to studying in the United States.
When you apply to UC Davis, you must report all international coursework as it appears on your international academic records. Please obtain and work from original academic records for each institution you have attended. Each UC campus has an International Admissions Specialist who will evaluate your international records and determine transfer credit.
Please do not convert international grades to United States grades, use a credential evaluation service, or the evaluation of another institution on your application. If your grades appear as numbers, words or characters, please report them as such in your application. If there is not enough space to write them out, please abbreviate the grades and include an explanation in the “Additional Academic Comments” section of your application.
If your degree is recognized by the university as comparable to a United States bachelor’s degree, it may be possible to apply for undergraduate admission for a second degree only in the majors of Biological Systems Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. The second degree must be in a different subject area than your first degree and you must transfer directly from a California Community College (CCC); all lower-division selective major criteria must be completed at a CCC prior to transfer. Admission requires the approval of the dean of the College of Engineering and the executive director of Undergraduate Admissions.
If you completed a three-year bachelor’s degree in India, you should apply as a transfer student, not as a second baccalaureate student.
