I’m a prospective student at UCB and wanted to know directly from current students your self-reported ratios of how much true grasp of course material you bother to have vs how much clever parroting/regurgitation you do as a necessary means to get by vs how much “yolo” coasting you allow for maintaining sanity.

To my inferiority complex brain it seems like everyone is essentially a “perfect” student at UCB and so even if I get in, I ought not to enroll since I’d be surrounded by people who are either 100:0:0 or 80:20:0 at worst and thus become an outcast.

I would put myself at 60:30:10

I’m trying to understand if a school like UCB means everyone here considers the education they are getting as something so sacred and flawless that in order to honor this preciousness they make sure to push themselves no matter what to be an 80:20:0 student or better, and therefore anyone who isn’t doing similarly around them is not worthy of the prestige.

In other words, do you look down upon fellow students who manage to graduate but not with the most deepest perfect high-octane grasp of the things they set out to study?