The same can be said for Cal/Stanford students. (An alum from both) I’ve met some really smart people and some really mediocre people out of these schools. Same is probably true for IITs and IIMs. Testing well shouldn’t be taken as a proxy for being a genius, but at the same time, concluding that all of them are average, is a bit of a stretch.

That being said, we had students transfer over from UC Davis to Cal, and I think comparing your wife to a UC Davis graduate, is not as big of a put down as you think. Most UC Davis grads would perform almost the same as an average UC Berkeley grad if they had the same opportunity.