“Ithaca is also isolated. It’s knock is that it gets cold, REALLY cold,”
The first or second time that I was in Ithaca it snowed about 3 feet in one day. There wasn’t much kayaking going on at the time. It is IMHO a very beautiful location.
Berkeley and Cornell are both very strong universities. You probably should consider other schools also if you want your chances of transferring to be significantly above 0. Visiting is going to be tough if you are looking at schools all around the US (Berkeley to Cornell is quite a distance, or probably two flights)