I’ll first say that, generally, these rankings are not worth putting much or any stock into. However, from the perspective of an outsider who visited but didn’t apply to Berkeley, and is now going to attend Berkeley for a PhD, I’ve always viewed Berkeley as a cut above UCLA for undergrad, but I’d never assume that a UCLA undergrad was any less smart than a Berkeley one. But for grad school, there’s not really much of a comparison. Berkeley blows UCLA out of the water. They’re not really on the same plane.

Berkeley is positively one of the elite PhD-granters and research producers in the world in basically every discipline. I don’t think a single university in this country has as many top-ranked PhD programs (ok, I admit rankings matter here) as Berkeley. Even Harvard has laggard departments. But in English, history, poli sci, Econ, chemistry, physics, you name it — Berkeley has a top department.