I do not think you can apply now as a freshman. That day came and went 3+ years ago. Your route would be through junior college. It's a fine route.

Dunno where you live but go to JC. Consider moving to where there's a good JC. Kill it. Start slow, take a couple of classes and slaughter them. You need a minimum number of credits to transfer and there's a maximum as well.

Berkeley has one application per year, in the Fall. So if you start in January, you could almost be transfer read by application time. You really have to learn about requirements and articulation agreements and deadlines.

Transferring into Berkeley. You apply to the UC, 4 campuses. You apply to a school (Engineering or L+S or ...) and a major. You need to be a competitive applicant in that major. In EECS you need to kill it. Not impossible, not easy.

All of the UCs are awesome. Berkeley is incredibly tough, Marine Corps tough. Not a happy place at all, but worth it. The workload in EECS is harder than the Valley.