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Berkeley is an objectively lower tier school than Stanford that has a 4-5x higher acceptance rate but Berkeley most definitely has a more "rigorous" CS program for undergraduates. Same applies to the honors classes at other public ivies that are accessible to "good students" without the need to be superhuman like the HYPSM+ admits.

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This is why acceptance rates cannot be considered in a vacuum as a measure of universal quality. Informed people generally understand that there is a lot of overlap in the bell curves of the intellectual abilities of Stanford and Berkeley undergrads. Stanford may generally have a higher stature in that it has a stronger association with wealth, but only fools believe it has the monopoly on student intellect in the Bay.

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