I can only comment from a science education perspective and things I found as I think Berkeley is a better school OVERALL than many east coast privates and it thus deserves the name recognition and fame (mainly from the caliber of faculty research and graduate programs),but I would argue that the caliber of many of the undergraduate programs (except maybe engineering) is just as good if not better than Berkeley at many east coast and top midwestern schools (including ones with less lay prestige such as my alma mater). This doesn’t really result from these schools really “trying” to be better, but mainly just because they have lower enrollments and can thus give a good curriculum (especially in the sciences) to more students, whereas, unless you’re Michigan (known for broad sweeping changes in science education that cater to the masses of students) a public school with very large enrollment will have a harder time doing that for most students. One thing that Berkeley does as well as the very top schools is tiering its courses to cater to the “very” top talent among incoming and outgoing students (as in it has honors courses and special courses for students with extremely strong preparation, even strong in comparison to what is an overall very well-prepped student body. For example, Berkeley is more likely to have an equivalent to Harvard’s math 55 or physics 16). In my opinion, most schools below say rank of 15 (many schools such as Penn and Northwestern are above 15 and only recently instituted tracks such as integrated science programs which will cater to the more ambitious among STEM oriented students) are not as effective in doing this (for example, for physics, there may be only 2 or 3. One for poets, a non-calc or calc. based for pre-meds and a calc. based one for engineering students whereas Berkeley and places like HYPSMCalt and Chicago will offer even more “intro” courses, some that even cater to those interested in more abstract math and physics. Emory produced a Goldwater this past cycle who was a math major. Apparently our curriculum for undergrads in math is so underwhelming for a student like him that he was taking grad. courses as a sophomore and this isn’t the only time that this has happened…no surprise that they will finally offer honors courses for freshmen starting this fall).
The curriculum provided to the “masses” (especially at the introductor level) seems stronger at most places (like I’ve compared course materials like general chemistry, organic chemistry, general biology at Berkeley with some of the less famous top privates like mine and at very worst, these schools would have an instructor on par with a more difficult instructor at Berkeley, but many times, it would be a bit tougher. I notice that, unfortunately, general chemistry at Berkeley has gone back to multiple choice which is kind of sad…the same can be said for biology) but very top talent can often just breeze through the coursework at these schools (I will also admit that Berkeley was better at providing challenging advanced courses than many places which had limited offerings to begin with. This is especially the case in the natural/life sciences), which is not what you want unless the student is pre-professional or something (and thus just needs very high grades so may still choose easier instructors/courses even if given the opportunity to do more. Clearly you want to challenge these students enough for them to be prepared, but you don’t want to break them to the point where they are not competitive. It is much less risky to challenge non-prehealth students). You want to train people who plan to go on to get a PhD in STEM subjects very well (as you don’t just want them to get PhD’s, they should become leaders in their fields), and you cannot do this by shortchanging the best among those seriously considering studying said subjects at the graduate level by making them start on the same track as students with much less ability and preparation in the area in question. So I would just in general say that Berkeley’s undergraduate program really knows how to treat the very top of the applicant pool well and make them the best, but I wouldn’t scoff at the baseline level of undergraduate education at even the less prestigious among the top ranked private schools.
Also, I don’t know if I would be criticizing the private schools’ admissions schemes so much considering the fact that, Berkeley, while having extremely high stats for a public school (as does Michigan, Georgia Tech, and Virginia), is still, after 209, getting the same level of students as my alma mater, Emory. Emory is basically the bottom of the top 20-25 schools in terms of prestige (okay, well, other than Cornell and Brown, I suppose it is similar to non-Berkeley schools between 15 and 25) and scores and has been for a while (maybe along with Georgetown?). The fact that it can have “holistic” admissions and still get similar caliber students to a much more famous place like Berkeley is kind of telling. The admissions are not as random as one make them out to be. The scores at all of these schools are still abnormally high, but people would just rather worry themselves sick over who most of the bottom 25% are and how they got there. A good question may be to ask: Is Berkeley that much different? The amounts of URMs declined at such a school, but did those bottom 25% start going to Asians and whites or did the bottom quartile just raise itself simply because they stopped admitting very subpar URMs whereas a place like Emory or Georgetown was already admitting “decent” (I would honestly say anything 1200/1600 and higher is reasonable for most to be considered) ones to begin with?