I’m glad you’re excited about your options. Congratulations on all you have achieved.
$136,000 for UCB is still not worth it compared to free for Wellesley.
These are just my opinions, and I know there will be users who disagree, but here is a conversation I had with another student who has a choice between excellent LACs and UCB:
"Huge lecture halls with 1000 students are not unheard of at UCB. Cal is a research institution. So unless you’re doing research, you will be grinding. Professors spend all their time researching and aren’t really interested in undergrad teaching.
You will rarely see your professor until you’re an upperclassmen, and maybe not much even then. You will be taught by TA’s and grad students for at least the first two years, primarily in large classes. So anyone who thinks they will go to Cal and rub shoulders with famous professors is sorely mistaken. That is extremely unlikely to happen.
You can, of course, get a good education at Cal, but understand that it’s not necessarily the BEST education. My opinion is that unless students are quite proactive, it’s harder to stand out at a research uni. There are simply too many other upperclassmen and grad students to compete with.
You are going to get much more professor interaction at the smaller schools. You will develop great critical thinking skills. If you want a more balanced perspective, here are some stats that illustrate this. I’ll use medical school entry as an example, which is notoriously difficult and relies on grades, MCAT scores, recommendations and interviews. UCB’s percentage of applicants who get into Med school is 51%, not bad when the national average is 40%. Wellesley gets 70% of its students into med school. Barnard gets 62% into med school. Wellesley grads also have an average higher starting salary than UCB."
With all the money you’ll save by attending Wellesley, you could rent an Airbnb in Malibu for the summer and get your California fix. Edit: You’re in CA. So rent your Airbnb and spend the summer in Paris. You can buy flights for you and your family and still have left over change from $136,000.