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<p>Okay, I agree with this. But you yourself said that you may have to try harder at Berkeley than at an elite private university. In fact, I think in most cases this is true. So holding other factors constant, why would you want to attend a school in which you have to try harder for your success? If you could go to a school where you don’t have to put all your effort into researching everything by yourself and fighting for every opportunity you get, and thus have more time for other ventures, why wouldn’t you want to go to a school like that? Maybe UC Berkeley offers just as many opportunities but at the end of the day it’s still probably not as a good place to attend on the whole as say, Stanford. That was my point. Sure you COULD get just as good an education at Berkeley, and you COULD get just as many opportunities, but you have to work harder and you are less likely to get them, so it’s not as a good place to go if you want those things.</p>