<p>Go happily to UCB. You’ll do very well there!</p>
<p>I attended Cal for undergrad.</p>
<p>Cal definitely has its share of problems, but is it worth paying $120K to avoid them? That’s for you to decide. My biggest complaints about Cal were</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Severe grade deflation, especially in the maths, sciences and engineering. Most lower-division classes are curved to a B-/C+ mean, and upper-division grading distributions are only slightly more generous (usually B mean.) If you’re planning on going to medical school, set expectations accordingly and understand that you will have to work hard to beat the curve.</p></li>
<li><p>With regards to choosing majors, I don’t know how easy it is to switch majors at Stanford (as an undergrad) but I have heard it is much easier. If you are admitted to Cal’s College of Engineering or College of Chemistry, you’re officially in that major from day one unless you switch out. Switching majors at Cal means fulfilling a list of prerequisites, attaining a minimum GPA and applying to the major before your junior year…and for the most popular majors, some students will be turned down.</p></li>
<li><p>The Tele-BEARS signup process is annoying. You’ll get a 15 minute window to register for your classes, and you can only signup for something like 10 units during Phase I and the rest during Phase II. As an engineering student, I tried to register for a bunch of UGBA (business) classes and I couldn’t get into them. If you stick to classes within your department, you might not experience as much trouble as I did.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>On the other hand, I vastly prefer the semester system to the quarter system. The quarter system moves too quickly and is much more exhausting, and the fact that a lot of classes are only offered once per year makes schedule planning more difficult.</p>
<ul>
<li>You’ll have to deal with an inflexible bureaucracy at both schools.</li>
<li>The quality of education you’ll receive is about the same.</li>
</ul>
<p>Personally, I would NOT pay $120K to attend Stanford over Cal.</p>
<p>Go to Cal if Stanford fin aid doesn’t come through. You’re really lucky to be choosing between these two schools! Be excited wherever you go!</p>
<p>This is coming from a person whose been at Stanford for five years and loved his time here! Stanford isn’t worth that much extra from berkeley especially not in engineering. Both schools have amazing engineering and seriously both are fantastic. It’s really a no brainer in my opinion (unless fin aid does come through and then I think you should enroll at stanford!)</p>
<p>So what, OP, did you end up deciding?</p>
<p>I read an article in The New Yorker that said Stanford will give FREE tuition to students families that make less than $100,000 per year. </p>
<p>Why not use this?</p>