<p>Cal and Stanford are very stats focused at every stage. The UC’s take a lot of transfer students at junior year, mostly from community colleges in California, though.
Mills is in Oakland, near Berkeley. It has had a lot of prominent composers through the years (including Milhaud); it is still a woman’s college at the undergraduate level, so if you are a man, that would rule it out.
UC San Diego? It is southern California, but a lovely place, great weather and beaches. Not as hard to get into as Cal or UCLA, but one of the top UC’s.
You might also look at UC Santa Cruz (I don’t know anything about their program), which is one of the easiest UC’s admission-wise and one of the most beautiful campuses in the US. [UCSC</a> EMS Home Page](<a href=“http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/]UCSC”>http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/)</p>