| If someone out there is a better-than-average web surfer, The New York Times, did an article (over a year ago but I'm not sure exactly when) about matriculation rates at different school--namely, the private Ivies, Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley, UCLA and another one or two of the public universities--showing a comparison, for example, of what percentage of students choose which university over the other. If I remember correctly, the 5% HYP vs UCB alluded to hereabove is correct. UCB did best against Cornell, where it won 45% of those battles. The Admissions Office at Berkeley would also maintain this information for all of its "peer" school (n.b. jmilton90--UCB does not consider UCSB to be a peer school, neither undergraduate nor graduate).
Also, I find it interesting that jmilton90 has deemed UCB's undergrads to not be on the same par as those at Stanford. If you want to break it down into a purely quantitative comparison, you will find that UCB's students are, on average, as strong as those at Stanford. Both schools have some students who are "off the map" but the average student is not so different. Looking past the numbers, I would say that Stanford, as well as HYP, has a more interesting student body than that you find at Berkeley.
I am from the East Coast, went to boarding school in Massachusetts, and went to California specifically to go to Berkeley (I didn't get into Stanford) and have siblings who all went to school back East. I cherish the experience I had at Berkeley but I would have liked to see a greater ethnic and geographic diversity at the school. Post-Berkeley, I am at an Ivy-league graduate school and I can assure you that my HYP classmates are not remotely any brighter than myself or my classmates from undergrad at Berkeley. My siblings, HYP people, would also agree. |