<p>I got accepted to MIT and also got the Regents Scholarship for UC Berkeley for chemical engineering. I realize that the perks from Regents (priority enrollment and housing, faculty advisor, networking) is irrelevant and for the most part available for all MIT students because it's a private school. MIT is affordable but still more expensive than instate tuition at Cal plus the minor Regents monetary award. I suppose my main concern is academic rigor. Is it harder to get a GPA high enough for grad school admission at Berkeley (with its bell curves and cutthroat competiton) or at MIT (when surrounded by the top STEM students in the world)?</p>
<p>I think Berkeley would be harder. People are really-smart at both schools. Neither school has grade-inflation. But MIT has Pass/ No Record for 1st semester freshman to let you get adjusted, and A/B/C/No Record for 2nd semester. Berkeley has no such system, so if you sink your first semester (which is when most people do their worst), your GPA will be affected. </p>
<p>…Pray for your GPA if you attend MIT.</p>
<p>I second @lldm21 I loved reading through all of MIT’s blogs (which are essentially diary entries by current students) when I applied (it was my random school that I absolutely fell in love with after visiting but knew that I didn’t have the stats to get in) but a prevailing theme seemed to be that MIT is an unimaginably difficult school. No matter if you had interned for NASA or had never had to study for a single test in your life, students continually blogged about the Herculean task of getting <em>decent</em> grades, never mind impressive ones. On the flip side, they absolutely raved about their professors and what they were learning, also saying that for the first time in their lives they felt like they belonged! In any event, @cosmogony, a huge congrats on your acceptance to both schools! </p>