Is UC Berkeley harder to get into than the University of Washington for undergraduate admissions?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that UC Berkeley is typically a much tougher reach overall, while the University of Washington can vary more by campus, residency, and especially by major. Berkeley is one of the most selective public universities in the country, and its applicant pool is intensely self-selecting. UW is also competitive, but for many students the difficulty depends heavily on whether they are applying in-state and whether they want a high-demand program like computer science, engineering, or business.

So in broad terms, yes, UC Berkeley is harder to get into than the University of Washington for undergraduate admission overall. That is the clearest general comparison most students and counselors would make when building a college list.

The important nuance is major-level selectivity. At UW, some direct-admit programs are extremely hard to enter, sometimes hard enough that they can feel comparable to the most selective options anywhere in public higher education. Berkeley also has very competitive majors and colleges, but even before you get to major choice, the university-level bar is usually higher.

Residency matters too. UW gives a meaningful advantage to Washington residents, so an in-state applicant may experience UW very differently from an out-of-state applicant. Berkeley is also a public university, but it is still broadly viewed as more selective overall, including for strong out-of-state applicants.

For college list planning, it makes sense to treat Berkeley as the harder admit in the head-to-head comparison. I would place Berkeley in a more reach-oriented category and UW as competitive but more situational, especially once your intended major and residency are part of the picture.