@professorplum168 Thanks so much! Very excited and may be reaching out to you for more info/advice about classes/campus! 
Congrats to your son @wolverinealum ! I am confident our kids picked the right school for them :). I saw some nice boys posts on FB and thought your son may click well. I hope he is able to find a roommate that he likes.
Funny someone mentioned kids wonât come back after they go to CA for college. I am sorry to say that may be true lol. We have 2 family friends. One with 1 girl and another with 2 boys. 2 went to UCLA and one went to Berkeley. Neither came back after graduation. They loved CA so much, 1 is doing PhD at Berkeley and 2 found good job, they have no desire to go back home to the suburbs of NJ! Their parents are totally fine with it, give them excuses and more places to visit. I shared my concern with hubby about loosing our girl to CA, he said âoh honey it would be so depressing if T coming back to this town after college!â. Mind you I love my town and there are plenty of high tech jobs around here, I was a little taken back but then itâs all making sense to me. There is nothing to hold us back here, we have been itching to get out of NJ ever since we left CA over 20 years ago. But then we have kids and stable jobs, stable life, good friends, good schools for the kids, so NJ here we are.
Anyways, I am looking forward to visit CA more than just once every couple of years. My husbandâs adviser is still teaching at Berkeley, and a few of his colleagues are still there. I have a lot of family in the Bay Area also. We will have 5 family members attended/attending Berkeley by this fall (my older sister, my youngerâs sisterâs husband, my hubby, myself and daughter). I am conflicted between pausing the alumni donation or increase it now that D is going to pay OOS tuition lol.
Congrats to @wolverinealum and your son! Wish him the best!
@Nhatrang , I think more specifically, you will lose your kids to Northern California if they go to Berkeley. We live in sunny SoCal, not LA, and even though S1 got a job offer here, even with the obscenely high rent up there, he still chose the Bay Area, because, he said, all his friends, all his connections are there, he will have more opportunities.
I myself am a Chicago boy and came out here to Silicon Valley 10 days after undergrad graduation as a CS major circa 35 years ago and never left. Starting salary was $27K a year and rent was $750 a month in Sunnyvale for a better-than-average one bedroom apartment, expensive what with a car payment as well. Really was contemplating going back to Chicago after 2 years, job wasnât going all that great, MBA school was a drag and really hated the social scene, but didnât pull the trigger. My situation turned out ok after that. Things have pretty much quadrupled both with starting salary and rent here in Silicon Valley, but to buy a house is just ridiculous out here. Up until the mid-90s you could buy a starter house for $200-300K, now itâs more like $1 mil.
Ugh sorry I got loosing and losing mixed up.
@sdhotmama I guess it depends on where you are. For us NJ folks southern CA is pretty attractive. But yeah personally prefer the Bay Area too.
@Nhatrang @sdhotmama @ProfessorPlum168 Sorry for delayâŠwas in Chicago for a few days and off of internet/email! THANK YOU!!! I really couldnât be more excited for S to have chosen Berkeley! (everyone here calls it Berkeley, not CalâŠso we are slowly adjusting! 
) He was successful in finding two other boys to do a triple room, and they seem nice and compatible! One is from Santa Barbara and the other is from D.CâŠhopefully they will get the room/location they put as their first choice! Itâs great that they find out by the end of this monthâŠat UMich kids donât find out until early August, so thereâs a lot of anxiety over the summer.
I have a feeling he will stay in the Bay area, at least initiallyâŠand Iâm ok with that! I would be happy to move to Cali eventually⊠I donât know how long Iâll be able to last in the Chicago wintersâŠone of the only places colder than Michigan!
I really am so thankful to each of you for your adviceâŠI am feeling so happy and relieved to have the decision made!
They have a tradition at Sâs high school on the day the seniors get released (other than AP exams, he will be done with school!) which is tomorrowâŠall of the seniors wear a t-shirt or sweatshirt of the school they will be attending, there is a class picture, and then when the last bell rings at end of day, the seniors run through the whole school and all of the other students (itâs a grades 6 - 12 school) stand in the halls and high five them as they whoop and holler out the main entrance! It is a really fun tradition and I am excited to see S proudly wearing his Cal sweatshirt (glad we bought one when we did the admitted students tour!).
As one chapter ends, another beginsâŠCali here we come!
@wolverinealum just reading the tradition at your S school makes me teary eyed! Did you shed a tear or two?
I am excited, proud, sad, all the mixed emotions when I think my baby, my firstborn , will graduate from Cal in two weeks! Itâs not always smooth sailing for him, but he persevered! Cal has been preparing and equipping him for the real world, and for that I am eternally grateful. Go Bears! (And go Blue! Beat that red team, please!)
@sdhotmama oh its a total tearjerker! mostly happy tears, slightly tinged with sadness because it feels like itâs all gone by way too quickly! I am feeling all of those same exact emotions about my son graduating from high school! I canât even fathom college graduation!! lol!
Iâm so glad to hear your feelings about Cal preparing him for the real worldâŠultimately, thatâs what we all want for our kids to get out of their college years! Iâm so excited for your son to be finishing and starting his next chapter!
Go Bears, and always Go Blue!!! (and ALWAYS beat that red team! lol!).
Enjoy your graduation weekendâŠbring the tissues!!