Currently I’m between Cal and a lesser renound private school in NYC. My parents completely support Cal and are willing to figure out paying OOS there and I know it should be an easy choice, but for some reason it’s not. When I was originally applying to schools, I wanted a big campus and Greek life and fun game days and lots of weird niche courses taught by people who know everything about what they’re teaching and that is Cal. But I found out about my acceptance late, and had already fallen in love with my smaller private school where it’s easy to get to know people and clubs aren’t 5 round processes and I can walk down the street to one of the best cities in the world.

My mom gave me til today to pick a school and I’ve pretty much spent the day watching videos and reading about Cal to convince myself that, for my future, this is where I should go. The problem is I get the sense that everyone there has all this drive and was at the top of their class and that’s not who I am. I don’t like stress, I partied a decent amount in high school and was excited for a big school because of party culture, and I can’t help but feel like going there would put me at the bottom of the ranks in a big pond. And on top of that a class with 400 students in it sounds like hell. I want to go to law school so I’m prepared to work my ass off in undergrad to get to a t14 but I’m afraid my best there simply won’t be enough to stand out.

On top of all that, I’m a black girl and when I toured Cal I saw a total of 6 black people and that’s because they were taking grad photos. I looked up the stats and less than 1% of the black population are NARPs. It’s a predominantly Asian school and coming from a high school with similar demographics, I know it won’t be easy for me to make connections.

And all that, at the end of the day it’s still Berkeley and who in there right mind turns down Berkeley. It’s by far the best school I got into. I wish someone could knock some sense into me and tell me to lock in.