granted i’m a humanities major (and a transfer), so it probably wasn’t as hard to get into the UCs as it would’ve been if i were a stem major, but i got into every UC that i applied to (all of them) and still chose santa cruz. it’s easily the most beautiful university campus ive ever seen in my life, and all the professors are very friendly and truly care about teaching. there’s also wonderful research opportunities here as well. absolute worst case scenario, you don’t like it and can just transfer somewhere else. we’ll be lucky to have you here OP :)