California football faithful are all too aware that Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza departed Berkeley for Bloomington at the end of the 2024 season and subsequently led the Indiana Hoosiers to an undefeated season and a national championship. Few know that the 2025 Heisman Trophy winner left Berkeley with a business degree—one he earned in just three years—and attended Indiana as a graduate student.
“It was important to me to get a Cal degree and to do so in only three years is something I’m quite proud to have done,” Mendoza told California.
Rightfully so. Only 5.6 percent of all Berkeley students graduate in three years. For elite college athletes to do so is nothing short of remarkable, especially at a university as academically rigorous as Cal. But Mendoza wasn’t alone. Two teammates who followed his lead by entering the spring transfer portal—running back Jaydn Ott ’25 and tight end Jack Endries ’25—also earned their degrees in three years, before moving on to football and graduate programs at Oklahoma and Texas, respectively.
And it wasn’t just football players, or male athletes, who graduated on an accelerated schedule. Cal women’s water polo goalie Isabel Williams ’23, a U.S. national team member, also graduated from Berkeley in three years, with a degree in psychology.
How did they do it? One key is high school Advanced Placement courses, which can translate to as much as a year’s worth of college credit. Another is the Athletic Study Center, with a location at Memorial Stadium, and the Student Learning Center, which provides academic support including tutoring, counseling, and tools to help with everything from time management to writing papers. Many student-athletes also attend Summer Sessions.
The Athletic Study Center is not affiliated with the Cal athletic department, an important distinction to anyone who might assume Cal student-athletes are receiving undue preferential treatment. Its purpose, stresses former executive director Derek Van Rheenen ’86, M.A. ’93, Ph.D. ’97, is to help athletes formulate a plan to achieve their educational goals, not help them skate through a Cal degree.
Ultimately, it comes down to motivation and a desire to graduate from Berkeley and nowhere else. As Mendoza said, “Earning my degree from the prestigious Haas School of Business at the No. 1 public university in the world was a blessing.”
