In 1989, Blow attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, double-majoring in computer science and English. He started as a physics major but switched to computer science because he "just felt called in that direction". Blow said of the computer-science major; "you had to know what you were doing" while the bachelor's degree in English was "all about bullshitting things". He was a member and president of the Computer Science Undergraduate Association, as well as the eXperimental Computing Facility (XCF), an undergraduate computer-interest organization. During college, Blow wrote some science fiction, which he published under a pseudonym. He spent five years at UC Berkeley but dropped out with less than one semester to go because he "was really depressed about being at school, I didn't like it. I didn't have a good time."
