Thanks all. I really didn’t mean to highjack this celebratory thread. Apologies to OP and apologies for sticking my nose into the grown-up table discussion LOL. I know I’ll have great options and I’m grateful for them. My folks went to solid state universities (not in CA, not “flagship”) and show me every day why the race for “prestige” is stupid. We Californians definitely have a fleet of highly capable ships and hopefully I’ll be on one of them. Realistically though - “we have multiple flagships” … tell that to employers, law schools, med schools, grad schools, etc. The numbers don’t lie. But diligence and open doors will get a kid where they need to go even if the path isn’t a straight arrow! (Whew - really mixing metaphors here).
So anyway - back to celebrating. We CA students definitely do have many, many great schools and vast opportunities in our state! And incidentally that extends into our quite amazing (though routinely bashed) public K-12 systems.