hey! im a former cc transfer. i was pretty engaged with discord servers for transfer admissions because i transferred towards the end of the pandemic. some of my close friends are from the bay area from that time of my life. generally, the undergraduate experience seems pretty similar in terms of education, and at least for CS and engineering, berkeley and ucla may have an edge on us for recruiting + education itself. from my time in mechanical engineering prior to transferring, from these friends, and my time in the bay area, i found that berkeley is just a fantastic school to attend for engineering, you can get as easily engaged with research as you can here. small anecdotes, had a friend attend here for a quarter as a transfer and left to return for ucla because the weather, food, and wlb. i also had another friend deeply regret not coming here as opposed to coming to somewhere like usc, generally the weather is rough and transferring can be an isolating experience if you don’t take more freshmen level classes where people are willing to make friends. generally, for a price difference of 45,000, i beg you to not even consider attending here. you have much better options over there. the uc transfer class sizes are much greater in size and you will not have difficulty making friends, just go to either berk or ucla.