Before you start to worry, we’ve got time before we need to figure out college for either girl. But when the mom of one of Zoe’s besties said she was planning to take her daughter on some college tours for Spring Break, we jumped on the bandwagon.

They were intending to tour both Berkeley and Stanford in Northern California, great UC schools and not far away, so we decided to turn the opportunity into a family road trip! Our first stop was UC Davis, a school near Sacramento where one of our friends happens to live–bonus friend time! We stopped off to hang out with her, then headed to the UC Davis campus and wandered around on a Sunday.

It was lovely! We didn’t get a guided tour at this one since it was technically still Spring Break for the school, but the sprawling green campus was so pretty. The arboretum area had a winding river running through a lush tree area, and as Zoe pointed out, it was “just big enough”, with 40,000 students, and “just far enough away (from parents)”. We started our spreadsheet to measure first impressions of the schools, and this one ranked 9 out of 10. Excellent start.

That’s an egghead above (and I don’t mean Bart or Zoe). Apparently this is some conversation-provoking art on the campus that has its own short documentary, where you can see a neat views of the campus.

Up next, we traveled to meet Zoe’s friend at UC Berkeley, which her mom had attended years ago. In contrast to UC Davis’ calm campus, Berkeley has a city vibe. We started on Telegraph Ave, which is filled with shops and restaurants (and people) and ends at the entrance to the UC Berkeley campus. With 46,000 students, it also meets the big enough criteria–and apparently it has great matcha. IYKYK. This one scored a solid 8.

It was on this tour (a guided one that was almost 2 hours long) that Ella’s enthusiasm for college started to wane… And at this school the bribery began. See ice cream below from Yogurt Park, apparently a Berkeley favorite since 1977. They have a signature “swirl in the toppings then add more toppings” approach that’s a winner:

Our third school tour was Stanford University. Don’t get me started. The campus is insanely gorgeous, and it is undoubtedly an amazing school (and yes, it’s private, it’s very expensive, and no, it’s not a UC school). With around 18,000 students, over half of which are grad students, it was the smallest student population of all our tours. I loved so much about it; however, I didn’t love the guided tour experience.

First, they separated students from parents into two rooms, each for a discussion with a panel of current students. They refused to talk about admissions, and in our panel, the three very charismatic students shared that they found no real reason to leave campus–I mean, BTS brought their World Tour to them. I will not go so far as to say Stanford is a cult (it’s a fabulous school), but it’s very obvious that it’s intentionally exclusive). With a 3.6% acceptance rate, “exclusive” is the right word.

Of course, Zoe loved it. Beating out UC Berkeley with an 8.5 out of 10, Stanford really appealed to our prospective student who particularly loved that they don’t allow you to declare a major until your junior year as you explore what you want to do through the “Stanford Ways“. Ella did not enjoy the 2.5 hour walking tour, 30 minutes of which happened in the rain, but she got a funny picture in the gift shop (see post photo above).

We kept driving south to our next stop, Cal Poly, where we met up with another of Zoe’s besties and her mom for another guided tour. I thought Zoe would LOVE Cal Poly. Located in SLO (San Luis Obispo), a college town with so much to do, this school has around 22,000 students and is known for its hands-on, project based approach to learning. Because of this, students graduate job-ready with real experience to show for their work. However, they require you to commit to a major out of the gate and make it challenging to switch mid-stream if you change your mind. And their application process is robust and acceptance rate low.

I’ll skip to the results: Cal Poly scored a 6 out of 10. Yikes. One interesting note on UC schools: There are ten of them, and you can apply to ALL at once. So she said she might decide to apply and wouldn’t “hate it” if she got it, because there is a really cute downtown area with awesome thrift shops. That’s something. Another 90-minute guided tour down, and Ella was a trooper.

After the tour, we regrouped in Paso Robles and enjoyed the Sensorio light experience to get a little nature and fun in on the way down. Look how Ella smiles when she’s NOT touring colleges!

Back to the college tours. Our final stop was UC Santa Barbara (also UCSB to those in the know), with around 26,000 students. If you’ve been to Santa Barbara, you’ll know why this might be MY top UC choice: it’s literally by the beach and less than 2 hours from home–isn’t that “far enough away?!”. But this is so not about me.

With an unmistakable beach culture, the campus has more bikes than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life. While every campus we visited had bike racks filed with bikes, this one had a bike path–let’s call it a road–where the stream was so steady that the tour guide warned us to keep a watchful eye. On UCSB, the cyclists have right of way and no qualms about taking advantage of that.

Though we live in LA, which means everyone thinks it’s easy to go to the beach all the time (it’s not), my children hate getting sandy. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve been to plenty of beaches and had fun, but I knew that the beach wouldn’t be the biggest draw for Zoe. That said, she liked the school! With a solid 8.25 out of 10, UCSB came in above Berkeley and behind both Stanford and UC Davis. So who knows?!

And there you have it. Five schools in six days, and our first college tours down. Of course, there are around 4,000 degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States alone, so we’ve got lots of options to consider as Zoe zooms in on what she wants to study.

Spoiler Alert: She has basically ruled out Stanford after we dug into admissions and found that they value “academic rigor” (read: success in LOTS of AP classes), and, unlike the UC schools that are “Test Blind” (they do not consider SAT or ACT scores at all for admission), Stanford’s average SAT score is 1510-1570 for admission. A perfect score is 1600. We talked openly about the fact that she’s got time to aim for both those criteria, but she decided that doing so would “ruin her high school experience.” I can’t say I blame her. YOLO, baby.

I truly don’t remember having to weed through all these options when I was in high school, but as anyone with a college degree can attest, where you start isn’t always where you’ll end up. I know many people with specialist degrees who went a different direction and had a wonderful life. I have a Spanish Education degree and my husband an Economics degree, neither of which we’ve ever been paid to use.

Wherever our kids end up, if they’re happy, it will have been the right choice. Here’s to exploring what’s next, and honestly, I’m just glad we have given some real-world perspectives to both our girls as they figure it out.