During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley--then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education--made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for home-front employment in fields traditionally closed to them. Women also effectively opposed gendered restrictions on extracurricular participation, filling for the first time such influential campus leadership positions as the presidency of Berkeley's student government and editorship of the university's student newspaper. Female students at Berkeley also furthered activist causes during the war years, with the University Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) serving as one of the most popular outlets for their political engagement. By investigating the ways that female students at the University of California, Berkeley, challenged and overcame limitations on their academic and extracurricular opportunities while extending their political activism during World War II, this essay illuminates both the strength of college women's convictions and their capacity for self-emancipation, while contributing to scholars' efforts to correct popular misconceptions of the history of women's higher education in the United States during the tumultuous years of the mid-twentieth century. (Contains 132 footnotes.)