Is the University of Maryland or UC Berkeley harder to get into?

UC Berkeley is harder to get into overall. It draws a much larger national and international applicant pool, has a stronger reputation for extreme selectivity across many colleges and majors, and is widely treated as one of the most competitive public universities in the country. Maryland is selective too, especially for out-of-state students and certain programs, but it is not typically viewed in the same admissions tier as Berkeley.

One big differentiator is applicant demand. Berkeley gets intense interest from students applying to engineering, computer science, business, biology, economics, and other high-demand areas, and that pressure affects admissions across the university. Even applicants to less oversubscribed majors are still applying to a campus with very limited room relative to demand.

Another difference is how often major choice changes the odds. At Berkeley, some colleges and programs are especially tough to enter, and students often treat it as a high reach even with very strong grades and coursework. At Maryland, there are certainly competitive pathways, especially in programs like computer science or business, but the overall level of admissions difficulty is usually lower than at Berkeley.

Residency also matters, but it does not flip the comparison in most cases. Maryland can be more accessible for in-state applicants than for out-of-state applicants, while Berkeley gives a noticeable advantage to California residents. Even so, Berkeley is still usually perceived as the tougher admit in an overall head-to-head comparison.