Berklee Lingo

As a Berklee family member, you are transitioning to the Berklee community just like your student. However, unlike your student, you don't have the experience of being on campus every day to become familiar with the Berklee lingo that your student is quickly learning and using. The New Student and Family Programs team seeks to make this transition easier by giving you a crash course in the Berklee lingo to help you navigate this transition. Like many institutions, Berklee uses a variety of acronyms and other shorthand for referring to its many buildings, programs, and entities. This list may prove helpful in navigating them. To see a list of other terms that are common in higher education, check out this page. 

Buildings and Locations

As a Berklee family member, it can feel like another world when you hear your student talking about different locations and buildings around campus. At Berklee, we don't refer to any of our buildings or locations with street names; typically we refer to them by street number only. These are some of the common locations around campus that you will hear from your student and different offices for when we welcome you to campus for move-in, Family Orientation, Family Weekend, and so on. Many of the offices around campus are featured in the interactive map of campus. We encourage you to check out this resource when looking for different locations on campus in preparation for your visit. 


Departments and Programs

At Berklee, there are a variety of departments, programs, and offices that are referred to with acronyms or shortened names. We've listed some of the most common departments and programs below. As a Berklee family member, you may interact with these offices in order to help support your student. We encourage you to check our department directory if you wish to learn more about specific offices and how to get into touch with them. 


Miscellaneous 

There are a variety of other acronyms that you'll hear from your student and various campus resources that do not fit into a neat category. These can be programs that your student takes part in, alerts that they get via phone and email, even the names of assessments they take prior to attending Berklee. Don't see an acronym on our page? Feel free to email us at families@berklee.edu, and we'll be happy to provide more context.