My advice would be to go to Berkeley and transfer to USC if you don’t get in to Haas. If you don’t get in to Haas and USC won’t take you, then do Econ at Berkeley. My daughter got in to both USC and Berkeley and chose USC because of the uncertainty of Haas but as a parent, it was tough to agree to pay more than twice as much. I would take what is given to you, especially if it is as good of a school as Cal. If it was UCLA, then better off at cc.