You're confusing a public school system with individual schools. Of course UC Merced is not on the same level as Oxford or LSE. But Berkeley and UCLA certainly

You're confusing a public school system with individual schools. Of course UC Merced is not on the same level as Oxford or LSE. But Berkeley and UCLA certainly are[1]. [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/reputation-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...