Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:54     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
The overall quality of peers will be much better at HYP in general.

The top 20% of Berkeley is probably on par with HYP, but Berkeley overall doesn't touch HYP.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:53     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Berkeley individual STEM departments are higher ranked, but the overall prestige of HYP combined with much higher resources per student makes HYP a no-brainer.

Though Berkeley STEM is legendary, the school is seriously strapped for resources. Students have a hard time getting lab time to do research, for instance. Berkeley's housing issues are a mess. Berkeley notoriously has massive bureaucracy issues and crumbling infrastructure.

Even in the Bay Area, HYP carries more clout and prestige. Telling people in SF that you went to HYP will raise eyebrows and draw a small gasp. Saying you went to Berkeley won't be as impressive because there are a zillion Berkeley grads running round the Bay Area and it's a much bigger school.

Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:29     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.


No it's not.

Honestly, Cal undergrad is trash now. It's a class full of lottery winners.


Not really.

If you are not aware, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. UC Berkeley is:

#1, #3, #4 Chemistry, Physics and Biology
#2 in Computer Science
#3 in Engineering
#5 in Math

Also
#2 in Business
#1 in Economics

It’s a solid school on par with HYPSM, at least for STEM, with great internship and job opportunities after graduation. In state tuition for UC Berkeley is 16k, Harvard is 60k. A lot of students in California take community college classes that transfer automatically to UC system. Potentially a student could save ~200k over four years by going to Berkeley. That can be used for grad school, or just start up money in life.

However if Berkeley is not a good fit because it’s a bit of a free for all, it’s perfectly fine to choose something else even if more expensive.

You’re so funny. You know we’re talking about undergraduate not graduate school, right? Berkeley undergraduate is several tiers below HYPSM, especially the student quality.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:29     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
What if the choice was an Ivy but you graduate with $200,000 of debt or UCB with no debt?
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:24     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.


No it's not.

Honestly, Cal undergrad is trash now. It's a class full of lottery winners.


Not really.

If you are not aware, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. UC Berkeley is:

#1, #3, #4 Chemistry, Physics and Biology
#2 in Computer Science
#3 in Engineering
#5 in Math

Also
#2 in Business
#1 in Economics

It’s a solid school on par with HYPSM, at least for STEM, with great internship and job opportunities after graduation. In state tuition for UC Berkeley is 16k, Harvard is 60k. A lot of students in California take community college classes that transfer automatically to UC system. Potentially a student could save ~200k over four years by going to Berkeley. That can be used for grad school, or just start up money in life.

However if Berkeley is not a good fit because it’s a bit of a free for all, it’s perfectly fine to choose something else even if more expensive.

It definitely is all these things for grad school, but any cal grad will tell you that that really doesn’t make your undergrad experience better than an ivy.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:15     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.


No it's not.

Honestly, Cal undergrad is trash now. It's a class full of lottery winners.


Compliments of being testblind.

The kid with the highest SAT score in DC’s high school (class of 125) is headed to UCB OOS. Somehow they managed to pick him despite not seeing his score (it’s because he had 5s on all his APs, and UCB is not AP blind).
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:07     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.


No it's not.

Honestly, Cal undergrad is trash now. It's a class full of lottery winners.


Compliments of being testblind.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 21:01     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.


No it's not.

Honestly, Cal undergrad is trash now. It's a class full of lottery winners.


Calling it a class full of lottery winners when the alternatives on this thread all have sub-5% acceptance rates lol.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 20:58     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.


No it's not.

Honestly, Cal undergrad is trash now. It's a class full of lottery winners.


Not really.

If you are not aware, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. UC Berkeley is:

#1, #3, #4 Chemistry, Physics and Biology
#2 in Computer Science
#3 in Engineering
#5 in Math

Also
#2 in Business
#1 in Economics

It’s a solid school on par with HYPSM, at least for STEM, with great internship and job opportunities after graduation. In state tuition for UC Berkeley is 16k, Harvard is 60k. A lot of students in California take community college classes that transfer automatically to UC system. Potentially a student could save ~200k over four years by going to Berkeley. That can be used for grad school, or just start up money in life.

However if Berkeley is not a good fit because it’s a bit of a free for all, it’s perfectly fine to choose something else even if more expensive.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 19:53     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:No, at least for STEM, Cal is far ahead.


No it's not.

Honestly, Cal undergrad is trash now. It's a class full of lottery winners.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 18:34     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Try finishing Berkeley in four years. Classes are hard to secure in any given major.


80% regularly do. In fact, in the latest USNWR data pull, Berkeley had a four-year graduation rate higher than HYP. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate

Even in years where it is the opposite, they are often with 5-8 percentage points of each other.

Just another one of these DCUM myths.

And I still probably wouldn’t choose Berkeley over HYP, but it does have some strong programs where it is competitive (CS, Econ, history, if you really wanted to study business not just end up in it).


I find that hard to believe because of six-year graduation rates. Berkeley: 93%, Harvard: 98%.


It’s not hard to believe, it’s the same data you can find on College Navigator from the National Center for Education Statistics and reported by the universities.

There’s a Covid element in there, but that it didn’t affect UCB and affected Princeton much less is not really a favorable argument.

Fact is that the “it’s hard to graduate on time” from UCB is mostly nonsense.


My son graduated in 3 years with a double major from Berkeley. None of his friends had trouble graduating in 4 or less years. I read so much about not graduating on time that we almost did not send him there. For him it was a valuable experience because his startup got funded while he was in college. He did not get into HYPMS despite strong stats but it worked out well. As another poster said, the opportunities are there at Berkeley but you have to actively seek them. He was OOS.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 18:27     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Bay Area parent here and Cal/HBS aim. Berkeley was an incredible experience for me but in paradoxical, double edged ways. For example there was no hand holding. If you survived that, you gained life skills; conversely, if you didn’t, there wasn’t much of a safety net. It was not easy to get undergraduate research opportunities; but if you did make it through, you had a chance to work with the very top players. The peer set is much more heterogenous than HYP, which is a great intro to life; however, I never felt surrounded by kids who thought they could change the world. They were there, of course, but you have to work to find them.


For HYP, the squid game starts in middle school.
For Cal, the squid game starts when you arrive at Cal. In part it's due to its much weaker students (20% community college transfers).


Tell me you don’t know anything about life skills without telling me you don’t know anything about life skills.
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 18:17     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Are you from California?
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 15:59     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:Bay Area parent here and Cal/HBS aim. Berkeley was an incredible experience for me but in paradoxical, double edged ways. For example there was no hand holding. If you survived that, you gained life skills; conversely, if you didn’t, there wasn’t much of a safety net. It was not easy to get undergraduate research opportunities; but if you did make it through, you had a chance to work with the very top players. The peer set is much more heterogenous than HYP, which is a great intro to life; however, I never felt surrounded by kids who thought they could change the world. They were there, of course, but you have to work to find them.


For HYP, the squid game starts in middle school.
For Cal, the squid game starts when you arrive at Cal. In part it's due to its much weaker students (20% community college transfers).
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2025 15:51     Subject: Berkeley vs HYP
Anonymous wrote:Bay Area parent here and Cal/HBS aim. Berkeley was an incredible experience for me but in paradoxical, double edged ways. For example there was no hand holding. If you survived that, you gained life skills; conversely, if you didn’t, there wasn’t much of a safety net. It was not easy to get undergraduate research opportunities; but if you did make it through, you had a chance to work with the very top players. The peer set is much more heterogenous than HYP, which is a great intro to life; however, I never felt surrounded by kids who thought they could change the world. They were there, of course, but you have to work to find them.

Finally, I’m in the finance world, and I would say that the branding associated with HYPS (and Wharton) remains supreme. Keep in mind though that I am not hiring EECS majors, so this could be very different. We did hire one Cal alum (Econ major) a couple of years ago who ended up being surprisingly non-ambitious (kind of just happy to be around). Cant make too much of a n=1 anecdote, but thematically consistent.

Ultimately, our two kids went down the HYP path. They have loved it. Stanford would have been a great option but it was important for them to be away from home. If financial resources are not an issue, I would recommend HYP in response to the original question.

I don’t know what “ambitious” means in the context of the workplace. You do your job and you get out; unless it’s your business, you have no reason to try to leverage your position to change the planet. Over reliance on ambition is how we got to the Sam Altman’s ruling the world (and making it a worse place).
-ivy grad.