@solostish Sorry if someone answered this as I didn’t read much except your comment about English. If you are fulfilling IGETC and your CCC accepts a score of 3 for English, once you are certified, the UC honors the certification - meaning they will accept the AP score of 3 as fulfillment, even though Berkeley would normally want a score of 4. So once you take critical thinking/comp and get certified, you have completed the English requirement.
This applies only to IGETC because standard breadth is verified by the UC, meaning you would need to follow the UC rules.