Is UC Berkeley harder to get into than UT Austin for undergrad admissions?

Yes. For overall undergraduate admission, UC Berkeley is typically considered harder to get into than UT Austin. Berkeley draws a very large national and international applicant pool for every college, while UT Austin’s process is shaped heavily by Texas state policies, especially automatic admission for many in-state students. That makes UT Austin extremely competitive in some cases, but Berkeley is more consistently selective across the full applicant pool.

One big reason is who each school is built to serve. UT Austin must reserve most of its seats for Texas residents, and a substantial share of those students are admitted through the state’s automatic-admission system based on class rank. Because of that, UT Austin can feel very different depending on whether you are an in-state applicant, an out-of-state applicant, or applying to a capped major. Berkeley does not have an equivalent automatic-admit structure, so its applicant pool is evaluated in a more uniformly competitive way.

Another differentiator is major-level pressure. At UT Austin, some programs such as business, engineering, and computer science can be exceptionally hard to enter, sometimes feeling tougher than the university’s overall admit picture suggests. Berkeley also has highly sought-after programs, but the school’s baseline selectivity is already very high even before you get into specific majors or colleges.