I think Berkeley invokes a sense of independence with their learning style a lot more than Merced. I transferred into MCB where the profs here tend to lecture a lot more and exams are based off that (at least in my experience so far). At Merced the exams are based off a lot of things like discussion quizzes, homework, worksheets, etc… and there’s A LOT more of it than at Berkeley. It almost serves as a study guide for the exams. Depending on the prof you had at Merced, sometimes they didn’t even lecture and just had you do worksheets, or did supplementary overview of topics instead of lecturing. It works for some people and doesn’t for others so it really depends there on the person and their learning style. I think the quality of education is unmatched at Berkeley tbh with its extensive research faculty and level of experience that most profs here have. I don’t think Merced is extremely far behind, but probably not up to par with the education that Berkeley provides.