<p>
</p>
<p>Sure, schools in the top 20 to 40 are selective schools. Why wouldn’t they be? Selectively is misleading for something like Berkeley, however – simply because a) it has a mission to serve the people of California, so it has more of a mission to “go down the ladder” (so its bottom level students will be “lower” and it accepts a lot more comm college transfers) and b) it’s easy as pie for people applying to other UC’s to apply to Berkeley since it just requires checking a box, which inflates the applicant pool.</p>
<p>But again, so what? It provides an excellent education, so why is it important to you that you somehow prove it’s “as selective” as the elite privates who have an entirely different mission and geographic pull? Why isn’t “it’s very good” good enough for you?</p>