So my kids will get free tuition at UC schools if accepted. They’re great kids so far. The oldest is fifteen and given her grades and extra curricular activities she’ll have an excellent shot at all of them.

My hope is they’ll all choose byu because as I’ve told her having 15,000 young men to choose from is better than five (that’s how many guys were active at the Claremont colleges when I attended before transferring). There were about 75 active members in the ward which included cal poly Pomona. That was 25 years ago.

UC Berkeley and UCLA are great schools. UCLA has about 100-150 active students in the institute program according to a friend who attended ten years ago. UC Berkeley is about half that.

UCSD UC Davis and UCI are also great schools. My sister said the institute program at UCSD was great but its been twenty years. I went a few times and it was great. Student/YSA wards in Davis and Irvine are well attended.

I haven’t heard about UCR UCSB or Merced.

Santa Cruz has a YSA ward with an average attendance of 30-40. My father in law has been in that branch presidency twice. Great people in the ward. Not a lot of them.

We have had a few kids in our ward go to cal poly San Luis Obispo. One of them just came home and didn’t like it much there. He’s struggled with his testimony for a while so it isn’t like Cal poly made things worse. Great kid. I’m hoping he heads to byu in the future.

We have CSUMB, the language institute and the naval postgraduate school in our stake. Our YSA ward is really small.

I’d have your daughter do a summer term at byu and then start at a California school if she can. I went to byu for a semester in winter 1998 to see if I’d like it and never looked back even though I had a scholarship at Harvey Mudd.

Your daughter can do great wherever she goes. These guys who are saying all is lost if she goes to a UC school are a little nuts.

Also look into how much housing will cost. My cousin who went to Berkeley paid more in rent than tuition and housing costs at byu.

Good luck.