What does stanford offer undergrads that berkeley doesnt? IMO access to legacies and the larger alumni network is about it.

Better faculty to student ratio (1:6 vs. 1:19). Closer proximity to actual Santa Clara (Silicon) Valley (and Google, NVIDIA, etc.) More NCAA championships and Olympic medals. Still leading in "big game" football series (though currently on a losing streak.) More Turing awards.

Not as many Nobel prizes - or elements on the periodic table - however. Berkeley (having many more undergrads) also has more alumni.

(But note for both schools that good researchers are not necessarily good undergraduate instructors.)

> More NCAA championships and Olympic medals. Still leading in "big game" football series (though currently on a losing streak.)

As a side note, I always found this obsession with sports to be a fascinating aspect of american culture. Being from an entirely different culture, it’s unclear to me why on earth would anyone give a fuck about this.

I have heard that in some countries soccer (aka "football") is a big thing for some reason.

Also the Olympics seem to be a big thing every four years, particularly in the country where they are being held; Berkeley and Stanford do pretty well in that competition.

Sports can be big in a country, sure, but US is the only country I can recall where sports matters as a criteria to choose a university to go to (as an in op).

But just in case - it’s cool, I wasn’t being judgmental.

You may be reading too much into the original question, which was simply:

> What does stanford offer undergrads that berkeley doesnt? IMO access to legacies and the larger alumni network is about it

Non-academic advantages (e.g. athletics programs, student housing, etc.) are still advantages.

Berkeley has its own set of non-academic advantages, such as closer proximity and access to San Francisco (via BART).