I did not mean to come off as biased at all. And to whomever said UCLA was my dream school you’re very very wrong UCLA was the last school I wanted to go to but my parents were not willing to pay for my dream private school (Claremont McKenna). I say the quality of life is better because well firstly UCLA is in Westwood which is an amazing college town. It’s always sunny and there’s the beach about 15 minutes away. Just comparing SoCal and Nocal it’s not hard to spot the differences. SoCal is very chill and laid back, and although UCLA is still a rigorous school, there is much less of a cut throat attitude. Also, UCLA is rated only behind virginia tech in top food ratings. While UCLA is perpetually sunny, Berkeley is perpetually gloomy. For people that don’t care about that then I guess it’s not a big deal but for me it definitely contributed to me choosing UCLA over berk. I go to a school that sends 10 people to Berkeley and 10 to UCLA each year. When I was weighing my decision I talked to each of those people and overwhelmingly the people at Cal said I like it here but… Or it’s okay but… I don’t know the horror stories you’ve heard but after talking to those people I’ve heard “you have to show up to class everyday because your classmates will not share notes”. And “they have very hard GES to weed everyone out because some people have to fail for us to succeed”. Ultimately you will get the same quality of education at both schools. In terms of people I know who got into both UCLA and Berkeley, the majority chose UCLA not because it’s better or worse academically but because of the overall quality of life.