[cozzyd]

Both schools have excellent reputations, so the PI is going to be the most important thing (and, perhaps, variety of PI's if you're not sure you want to stick with a specific one). After that you would consider things like course requirements, likelihood of having to TA, etc. And if you want to live in a city, Berkeley is much easier (yes, it's possible to commute to Stanford from SF, but it's a slog).

[guywithahat]

Both schools have a great reputation, however Stanford is clearly superior. Berkeley is, at the end of the day, a public school, and so it’s lumped together with other top public schools like UT Austin or U Mich. Stanford, on the other hand, is a globally recognized private university and more often compared to MIT

[cozzyd]

In the limited context of a Physics PhD, to people within the physics community, the reputations are essentially identical, and also essentially identical to MIT (though that may be different between the asker's specific subfield, which I am not super familiar with).

Outside of the physics community, there may indeed be some differences in reputation, though I'd expect them to be small, since anybody hiring physics PhD's will have a rough knowledge of Berkeley's excellent reputation in physics. Sure, in other fields (or for undergrad), the reputations may not be equivalent. NB: I'm Stanford undergrad, MIT physics PhD, so I have no personal reason to hype up Berkeley (the opposite bias, in fact...).

[mmooss]

> Berkeley is, at the end of the day, a public school, and so it’s lumped together with other top public schools like UT Austin or U Mich. Stanford, on the other hand, is a globally recognized private university and more often compared to MIT

Some data: Last I knew, Times Higher Education surveyed published tenured professors worldwide about the best schools in their field. I think it's probably the best and mabye only good data.

Every year, six schools have been head and shoulders above the rest overall (in random order): Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, and Berkeley.

[gaze]

this is nonsense

[guywithahat]

People in the bay hold Berkeley in a much higher regard than anywhere else in the country. If you go to Austin people will compare Berkeley to UT Austin, but if you go to Stanford they will regard your school to a higher degree.

I think OP should go with the better PI, however suggestion Stanford and Berkeley have the same level of prestige seems wrong to me

[gaze]

prestige among who? As a physicist, I couldn't care less what my school's prestige was amongst those outside of the physics community. Maybe you want to go work for a hedge fund, where Berkeley is also respected. Maybe it's worse to McKinsey? I don't know. Know your audience.

[SJC_Hacker]

The only people crazy enough to try to commute from SF to Stanford area (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, etc.) are hipsters who work in tech, or people who have spouses who work downtown. The rent is substantially higher.

[cozzyd]

That may be true now... when I was an undergrad *checks notes* nearly 20 years ago, plenty of Stanford grad students lived in the city.