There are admissions presentations available this week. The scheduling page says:
NOTE: The campus - including the Admissions Office - is closed for regular holidays, including President’s Day, Cesar Chavez Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, and the Winter and New Year holidays.
Does not mention being closed during spring break.
Typically only faculty and students are off for spring break. Staff and admins, including admissions officers, do not get this week off. Admissions offices are usually especially busy at this time, accommodating prospective students and recent admits who are visiting during their spring breaks.
I don’t think he meant this - but given it’s poor safety rating/environment, maybe he means - literally dodged a bullet 
UCSD is a top notch school for computer science and is highly recruited. I promise you’ll do great!
I was referring to the combination of the intensity, the many large classes, and the difficulty of getting the courses you need with the result that too many student need more than 4 years to graduate. That’s its reputation.
We’re talking about large classes particularly in computer science which can have over 1000 students in a class. I ran into an old college classmate at my 25th reunion. His full time employment was auditing large lecture hall classes at Berkeley and then selling his lecture notes to students. He had a large consumer base and made a good living doing this.
One might argue that it’s a problem if any students need more than 4 years to graduate. However, compared to other institutions, UC Berkeley’s 4 year graduation rate is not bad. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate
My S23 is an EECS major, and it’s pretty easy to graduate early in that major; the department actually posts 3-year and 3.5-year sample plans along with the standard 4-year sample plan. But it’s also not uncommon for students to intentionally stretch out their classes over four years, in order to take advantage of additional advanced classes.
I would be surprised if students wanted to buy lecture notes for CS classes, since the lecture videos, slides, and lots of other materials are posted online, so it’s not difficult to follow along even if you miss lecture. It seems the same way for all the other large STEM classes my son has taken. Maybe he’s talking about classes in other departments? Or maybe it was a while ago that you talked to this classmate.