You mean Cal - Berkeley?
That's not odd at all. When you're talking about that top tier of public universities (not *only* Berkeley, but that is certainly a prime example), you find lots of kids from very wealthy families.
The super rich don't always send their kids to private schools. Paul McCartney didn't send his kids to private schools - they went to public schools.
"If you get in bed with the devil, sooner or later you have to fook."
I went to public schools with plenty of children from millionaire families. Being a millionaire doesn't necessarily mean you'll choose to send your kids to a private school rather than a public school.
shareShe was hunting. Even then. For victims. Or patsys. Or story ideas.
Perhaps she didn't get her parents money til after she went to school.
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I have no idea what you are thinking -- you do realize that UC Berkeley is one of the very best universities in the country, and that it has an exceptional international reputation (far better than most private universities except for the top eight Ivies plus MIT and Duke)? That Berkeley is one of the hardest schools in the country to get into? That it is packed with Nobel laureates and elite faculty members and the top post docs and graduate students in the country? And in fact that the only school that Catherine could otherwise have attended in California (competitive with Berkeley) would have been Stanford (both of which I attended by the way so I don't have any complexes about a "public" state school like Cal or private school like Stanford). I knew as many students from wealthy and elite backgrounds at Cal as I did at Stanford. Students at Cal and Stanford feel d$mn lucky to be at either school. Your point MIGHT make sense if you were discussing Catherine's high school education but certainly not university. We also know very little about her parents other than the fact that they had money. That doesn't mean that they themselves were Yale legacy students or anything along those lines.
"Hearts and kidneys are tinker toys! I am talking about the central nervous system!"
UC Berkeley is probably the best state school in the country, but there are lots of private schools with higher average SAT scores. That does not mean it is not a great school, just that there are others that are better. I almost went to Clairmont McKenna. When I graduated from high school CMC had better SAT scores than Berkeley by something like 50 points. Vassar college also had higher SAT's than Berkeley which would probably surprise many.
Berkeley is definitely an elite school by my definition.