<p>I live in Mountain View, got into Berkeley, UCLA, and UC-Davis. I submitted my SIR to Berkeley and I'm going, because it's the best UC, especially for the science major I want to do.</p>
<p>OK, here's the situation...my parents are REQUIRING me to live at home and commute to Berkeley every day - drive to Fremont BART and take BART to downtown Berkeley BART (right next to campus). The drive is 30 min, BART is 51, so about 1.5 hours each way.</p>
<p>They keep saying I'm immature, not ready to be independent, and too young (I'm 16, so there's a point there). I already suggested dorms, co-op, off campus. ("How can you live by yourself?""...then the drinking/drugs litany of dorms)...it's partially because of our campus visits, because the Berkeley campus is very uhh...well, you know how Berkeley is, and also about the 3 reasons at the beginning of this paragraph.</p>
<p>What should I do??? I won't be able to sway them.</p>
<p>I make that commute every few weeks. It's not an easy one. Doing it everyday saves a ton of money, but it also takes a lot of energy. Tell them it will hurt your academic performance.</p>
<p>You are rather young, but that commute is a bear and commuting makes your college experience something else entirely. It will separate you a bit from your peers (you'll have to leave things early in order to make the BART in time to go home), you will spend 6-15+ hours ON THE COMMUTE ALONE every week, and it will interfere with your studies.</p>
<p>The plus side: you'll save money, you'll get the chance to mature a little more normally instead of being thrown into the crazy mix and expected to sink or swim, your parents will be comfortable with your activities (because they'll be pretty limited!).</p>
<p>The negative side: you'll be isolated from some campus events, you won't have as much of a chance to connect spontaneously with faculty and peers, you'll be spending a LOT of time on a commute, you'll have a harder time setting up study sessions for your courses (which is a big downside when you're a science major), you'll have a harder time doing anything for fun (because of that commute eating up a part time job's worth of time in and of itself).</p>
<p>You're young, but you're obviously not dumb. See if you can figure out what it is your parents are actually balking against -- methinks it's a healthy dose of "my baby is all grown up but we're not ready to let him grow" combined with your admitted youth relative to most of the campus population -- and swing it so you can appeal to that side.</p>
<p>In addition, while you may be a little younger than many freshmen, maturity in college has v. little to do with age. Once you've reached a level of intellectual self-control, your age becomes quite irrelevant. I'm was about your age when I came to Berkeley (I turned 17 a month before leaving), and I'm on the other side of the world from my parents, so it's definitely possible.</p>
<p>Commuting (particularly for that period of time), coupled with classes that you'd want to take, activities that you'd want to participate in, connections that you'll want to form with faculty and students will not be very feasible.
Since you don't mention anything regarding price, I'd assume your parents' primary concern is that of having you live away from them. As liquidmetal said, commuting daily to campus might require a higher level of maturity than living on campus!</p>
<p>As an aside, perhaps you could consider applying for substance free housing if that would assuage some of your parents' concerns.</p>
<p>I have a sister who lives in Mountain View. Going to visit her via public transportation takes forever (but I love my sister and I go visit her anyway =]).</p>
<p>Just think of how expensive that would be.... 9 dollars just for BART, the trek to mountain view is ALL stop/go traffic.... i honestly doubt that will take 30 mins BTW (it took me 30 mins to get from my house in fremont to the shoreline in Mountain view at 12 at night after a concert.... and i speed like a madman). </p>
<p>That commute is honestly insane. You'd be spending more time in your car/BART than at school or at home LOL</p>
<p>This is a brutal brutal brutal commute. I went to Cal having just turned 17, living the dorms is actually a pretty sheltered experience. Tell them you'll come home for weekends. You're going to be so exhausted with the commute you'll have no energy to study.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the replies. So basically, the commute is very exhausting.</p>
<p>I have never ridden the BART before - how easy is it to study on there or do homework? Is it noisy? Bumpy?</p>
<p>I'm going to the Freshman Summer Sessions, so I'll get a taste of my next 2.5 years at Berkeley then. Hopefully that commute experience will give me more leverage.</p>
<p>Maybe I should just graduate sooner? Because I enter with 30 units through AP + 10 units for Summer Session. I might be able to graduate in 2 years or so, if I take a big courseload. Yeah, but the commute...</p>
<p>@ K_Twin: Money is not the main issue (although it does factor in, somewhat). Something like a co-op is incredibly cheap, 600-700/mo.</p>
<p>I think you can read on the BART but it's hard to do written work. Summer session is easier because it's only one class per day. The problem with commuting like that on a regular schedule is you may have to leave home at 7 am and not arrive back home until 7pm. That will be brutal. </p>
<p>Someone else was asking this, but they lived in Fremont. If you lived in Fremont, I think it is workable. but from mountain view, there's no really good solution. You might be better off driving the whole way, actually, it would probably be faster, but the gas and parking at berkeley would get expensive.</p>
<p>Well if you parents are REQUIRING you to stay at home, there's really no discussion, is there? The only way I can see how you can go around this is to argue that you'll shoulder the education cost..</p>
<p>16 years old and already taken a gap year, that is young!</p>
<p>I was sixteen when I started at Berkeley and was classified a sophomore due to AP credits. I cut loose socially at the expense of my studies and dropped out after a year. My family lived as far from Berkeley as Mountain View, but in another direction. My parents were strict and living at home might have kept me more focused on my school work as I was not ready for all of the freedom I experienced. Your mileage may vary.</p>
<p>How reliable is the BART? Does it come every 15 minutes on the dot, like the schedule online says, or is it more like the VTA here in santa clara valley? Because when I want to take the VTA on El Camino, sometimes I get to wait for 15+ minutes and then have 4 buses come.</p>
<p>Also, how much of a social life can I get out of this situation? Can you rate it from 1-10? A number would give me much better perspective. And what specifically would I miss out on? </p>
<p>"How did you guys graduate from high school so young?"</p>
<p>I'm wondering that myself... damn, 16... (However I took CHSPE @ 16 and started CCC, so I'll be an 18-yr. old junior this fall when I transfer... maybe some of you guys did something similar?)</p>
<p>Bart is 97% on time. It's only time every single time I've taken it (except once when it was delayed 15 minutes due to some construction). When you are living at home, your social life sucks.</p>
<p>First off, many freshmen will make some friends from the dorms, others from organizations. Rarely will you make close friends in classes (this somewhat changes once you take upper division courses in your major if it happens to be a small one). At least this is my experience. Organizations usually meet at night, so unless you plan to stay the whole day and evening in Berkeley, you'll miss out on joining these organizations you might be interested in. Also, you'll miss out on spontaneous weekend activities that you would have planned with friends.</p>
<p>Traffic is so bad between Mountain View to Fremont to Berkeley. For your own safety, you better live in campus. Lots of hidden traffic cameras in Fremont. One traffice violation will cost you around $400.</p>
<p>Social life is a big concern. The dorm is a great place to make friends. You live and eat together, you have the chance to meet people you'd otherwise never come into contact with, since you are all thrown together at random. By joining clubs, etc. you can make up for some of this, but the dorm experience is a nice one if you can afford it financially.</p>