Is UChicago more selective than UC Berkeley for undergraduate admission?

Yes. For undergraduate admission overall, UChicago is generally considered more selective than UC Berkeley.

One concrete difference is class size and institutional scale. UC Berkeley admits students into a very large undergraduate ecosystem with multiple colleges and majors, while UChicago builds a much smaller entering class.

Another differentiator is applicant behavior. UChicago tends to attract a self-selecting pool that is heavily composed of students already aiming at the most selective private universities, especially students drawn to its distinctive academic culture and essay prompts. Berkeley’s pool is enormous and exceptionally strong too, but it includes a broader range of in-state, out-of-state, and international applicants because of its role as a flagship public university.

A final distinction is how people in admissions typically talk about them. UChicago is usually grouped with the most selective private colleges in the country, whereas Berkeley, despite being one of the hardest public universities to enter, is more often discussed in the context of top public institutions. So if the question is simply which one is regarded as harder to get into overall, the answer is UChicago.