<p>1 - CalSO is not absolutely and totally essential, but you will get many things out of it, not just registration. If it is not a major hardship to attend, due to cost of flights or conflicting obligations for the summer, it is highly recommended (at least that is my opinion).</p>
<p>2 - in addition to the date on telebears, you will also need to enter an advisor code in order to register (varies by the college, not absolutely sure about CNR but someone can correct this if I am wrong). That code is given out at CalSO. For those who can’t attend, you will receive it after all the CalSO registrations have taken place. </p>
<p>While you can sign up for classes the next semester if you don’t get in the first one, what you don’t want to be doing is paying a huge sum to come to Cal for the first half year but not taking anything you are interested in or need. I don’t want to exaggerate this - there will be plenty of classes that you will still get into with the no-CalSO registration date. Convenient but not a ‘life or death’ kind of issue.</p>
<p>3 - The definition established by the state for residency (for tuition) at its universities explicitly excludes a student living in an apartment from claiming residency. Here is the area where it is discussed [Residency</a> for Tuition Purposes - Office Of The Registrar](<a href=“http://registrar.berkeley.edu/prospective_students/residency.html]Residency”>http://registrar.berkeley.edu/prospective_students/residency.html) but the bottom line is that they look at the residency of the source of your funding. Unless you are a legally financially independent adult with a trust fund or a job that nets more than the 50K per year costs, they know that your parents will be the source of some of the money. They make the deciding factor for tuition be the residency of your parents, not your residency. Unless your parents move here and start paying California taxes as a primary resident, they remain OOS and so will your costs. They will look for proof - tax returns from both you and your parents, proof of the claimed source of funds, etc. </p>
<p>4 - The 18000 is the cost for UC dorms. Once you move out of the dorms your costs will go down substantially. It is possible to find a place after one semester. While technically your room and board agreement is an annual one, they have a process to get most of your money back since there is always a backlog of people looking for university housing.</p>
<p>As far as the course curriculum, requirements (assuming when you say natural sciences you mean the college of natural resources and not the college of letters and sciences) and recommendations, that is part of the advising that happens at CalSO but also something you can do before by browsing the college and department web sites.</p>
<p>Here is the CNR section on requirements of the various majors
[Major</a> Requirements](<a href=“http://cnr.berkeley.edu/site/major_reqs_main.php]Major”>Majors & Minors | UC Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources)</p>
<p>Here is the CNR handbook that explains all the policies, procedures and college wide requirements <a href=“http://cnr.berkeley.edu/site/forms/oisa/undergrad_handbook.pdf[/url]”>http://cnr.berkeley.edu/site/forms/oisa/undergrad_handbook.pdf</a></p>
<p>This forum is a good place to hunt for old posts or ask questions about recommendations for classes - say you are looking for an interesting class to meet some breadth requirement, you can ask here, giving some of your interests, and people will let you know which were good, bad, easy, hard, whatever.</p>