With the exceptions of the engineering/CS, pre-med, pre-law, etc, none of the Berkeley alums or the impression I got from visiting Berkeley gave the impression it was cutthroat or competitive.
And a younger relative who is a current undergrad in engineering on some full-ride scholarship doesn’t seem to be put off so far after 2 years at Berkeley.
UCLA alums I know…including older relatives seem much more rah rah regarding UCLA sports/spirit than their Berkeley counterparts.
In this one respect, Berkeley leans much closer to my LAC when I attended in the mid-late '90s…cept Berkeley students weren’t nearly as apathetic/anti-pathetic towards college sports/athletics as my LAC’s student campus culture tended to be to the lament of some athlete classmates.