The two colleges in the Bay Area that I'm applying to in San Francisco are Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Stanford is a private school in Palo Alto, to the South of San Francisco. It is consistently ranked as one of the best colleges in the world in all aspects, often being called a "West Coast Ivy." It is extremely prestigious.

Berkeley is a public school in the University of California system. It is the best public college in the US, and ranks toe-and-toe with giants like Stanford in some fields. Berkeley is in the city it shares its name with, which is right across the bay from San Francisco.

Both of these schools have incredible civil engineering programs, which is the major that I'm applying to. However, at both school, I'm applying to modified version of the major. I'm enrolling in Sustainable Engineering at Stanford and Business Engineering at Berkeley. Both schools have unique programs which I really like, so I am willing to go to either one. However, Stanford has the slight edge in my opinion, but it's a very slight edge. Ultimately, it depends on who lets me in!

The two campuses, Stanford on left, Berkeley on right. Both look superficially similar, but couldn't be any more different.