<p>I warn: I don’t know much about the physics department, so most of my advice comes from knowing the maths department. My guess would be at least a decent bit of the advice applies to the physics department.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In maths at least, Berkeley’s department is characterized by maximal freedom awarded to undergraduates. You go do your thing, pretty much do what you want, and satisfy some minimal number of requirements. See no. 6.</p></li>
<li><p>Grading is quite hard in some physics classes, like the 137 series teaching quantum mechanics. In maths classes, it depends on the professor and a lot on how much of a knack you have for the subject.</p></li>
<li><p>Honors courses can legitimately be very hard, but depending on the instructor, they may not be that bad, and may only be a little harder than the corresponding non-honors course. It is not atypical for an upper div honors course to use a graduate level textbook. Usually everyone taking these got 5s on the AP exam and many know more beyond the AP test. It is not atypical for a lower div physics honors course to use a serious textbook requiring much more mathematical foundation. There will be some very great students, and everyone is smart, though not necessarily godly smart at all. The professors vary hugely – from very mean to nice, and from unmotivated to teach to very exceptionally thoughtful instructors. TAs usually are helpful, since they’ve possibly seen this material at close range in their prelim exams. Chicago also has a reputation for asking you to place into the classes you want to take. However, I have heard of stories of these things being waived. Also, the undergrad classes at Chicago in math cover more on average and are harder, because the culture of perhaps a larger percent of maths undergrads there seems to be to go to grad school in mathematics. That said, at Berkeley what often happens is the strongest undergrads finish their major requirements, perhaps take many honors classes, and then take at least one, if not a few graduate level courses by their senior years, and these are very rigorously done. Again, Chicago has harder classes than most schools…it’s just a more class and exam-centered school. Berkeley is much more free for all. I think a poster phuriku on the Chicago threads has said that the undergrad classes at Chicago can be harder than those at schools like MIT. My impression is, for instance, MIT’s math undergrad culture might be a little more like Berkeley’s, i.e. the culture as far as classes is more relaxed.</p></li>
<li><p>I know a professor who went to Chicago as an undergrad, and said a large portion of their requirements are college requirements, and that they were quite inflexible about what you could take. Maybe this is not the case now, but it might still be. At Berkeley, there are several breadth requirements one needs to fulfill regardless of APs. However, if you come here, I can list off a bunch of really easy ways to fulfill these requirements. Note that they can be taken pass/fail, unlike the classes you use to fulfill actual major requirements.</p></li>
<li><p>This is probably irrelevant to you, I’m guessing, because these both are tier 1 schools in mathematics, and a strong performance, together with the support of the faculty in letters of recommendation, boosts your chance of getting into graduate school greatly. A strong undergraduate should be fine at either.</p></li>
<li><p>I obviously ended up at Berkeley, but I didn’t know about Chicago much earlier, and found out it’s absolutely amazing. However, Berkeley fits my style more. The undergraduate classes in mathematics at Chicago are probably flat out better quality because I think they take classes seriously. At Berkeley, the culture is more that classes are a guideline. As per my reference in no. 1, I will mention this is why it’s very easy to get faculty to do some independent study with you if you’re actually serious. Of course, just asking random people to work through random topics just to say you did it is useless, but if you genuinely want to know more about something and feel like meeting with a professor to do it, it’s very easy to set these things up here, and the culture encourages it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Further: I rather like good weather, so that’s another point in favor of Berkeley. But there are very good reasons to go to Chicago over Berkeley, including the distinct culture, if that’s how one learns best.</p>