Is it harder to make the top UCs (UCLA and UCB) as an international student?

@sushi48: If you are going by rankings then CMU’s program would be the top followed by UCB and UMich which are all in the top 10. In the top 20 are UCLA and USC.

I like to compare CS curriculum’s between schools and look at their course offerings. Do you have a specific interest in a CS field such as Artifical Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Software etc… then see which school best courses for you interest. There is no bad school out of the bunch but you cannot get any better program than CMU.