Humility actually can serve you well. Some students will arrive expecting to be at the top of the class without effort, because that’s what they experienced in HS, and some may have a rude awakening. The grind in engineering is real, but with good study habits, you can stay on top of it! Just do all the good stuff like show up in class, go to office hours, ask questions if you get stuck or confused, start your work before it’s due, practice with past exams before your midterms and finals. Get sleep and take care of yourself, too. 
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Some thoughts/advice to consider:
- stop comparing yourself to your high school classmates.
- a lot of those summer Ivy League programs are actually “pay to play” programs. High $$ cost and most of the time, all you have to do it apply and hand over a big chunk of dough and boom, you’re in and then you get this big fancy name to add to your resume. Not as impressive as it usually sounds.
- You’re attending UC Berkeley! That’s a great school. You got admitted to a university that thousands and thousands of students who applied did NOT get accepted to. You are NOT in the bottom half of your high school. Stop telling yourself that.
- You’re soon going to graduate from high school and you have an exciting and bright future ahead of yourself. Charge forward and make your own path. Ignore what all of your high school classmates are doing…because it might seem like what they’re all doing right now is super important, but it’s not. Pretty soon, nobody’s going to care who’s going to what college or what their impressive stats are and all of that stuff.
Congrats on getting into college. You’re going to rock this.
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“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.” Kurt Cobain
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” Eleanor Roosevelt
Linkedin is the most pernicious of all social media - Me
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If you got into certain schools that means you deserve to go there. You probably made it through multiple rounds of admissions and admissions officers know what they’re doing; if you got in when others did not that means you were just a better fit. It’s a good thing to struggle in HS, it means you’re still growing you don’t have to worry about “Peaking in HS” or any of that. Other people may seem to have more impressive transcripts or linkedin profiles but those are just statistics, they don’t define the person; plus those people have had different experiences than you and it’s not an accurate comparison to make. You got into a good college and you’re working hard, that’s what truly matters.
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