<p>Have you visited Caltech? If you care about having a social life and a real college experience at all, you will hate it there. The entering class is ~200 people total and the boy:girl ratio is nowhere near equal even after Caltech attempts to make up for that by admitting more girls. Even my parents agreed after taking the tour there that I would absolutely hate it and was not applying. You have to take that into account even if rankings seem like the only factor right now. That’s not a problem at Berkeley at all. It’s still difficult academically, but besides that you can have and be whatever you want.</p>