<p>RML, can you possibly try to think of the elite schools in the US - of which Berkeley would certainly be one - as just a “pool” of various options offering different flavors to fit different people’s tastes and preferences – instead of ALWAYS trying to rank and pretend that there are major differences between them and that some are uniformly better than others? Because, really, in the US, you can’t go wrong attending one of these excellent schools, and it’s really pointless and fruitless to fret over the differences or pretend that they have any more meaning other than personal preferences.</p>