<p>cal students constitute a diverse “intellectual” student body
you have the smart students who were rejected by all other places, the students who choose berkeley over certain schools (ex: i’m choosing cal over yale/(maybe caltech) and a few of my friends are choosing cal over princeton/mit/caltech)
then you have the average student (people who are smart in high school, but nothing special), and then you have the “lucky” admit</p>
<p>obviously, there will be a huge difference in distribution of intelligence
yes, a lot of the students are struggling to succeed, but there are many who are easily strolling through the “hard” classes</p>
<p>and many upper division math classes are pretty much a joke (to get an A in) for anyone seriously interested in math</p>