Berkeley vs Northwestern vs Rice

Have you considered Northeastern? You might like their blended majors (one example: https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/programs/bs-computer-science-economics/ ) and you might get merit aid. Their CS core is very well thought out and front-loaded so that students have a functional skill-set before their first co-op.

Also, if you are of a more interdisciplinary bent and not dead-set on a deep dive into the theory and practice of computer science, but rather more interested in using computational methods to perform complex analyses, you might consider Data Science or Data Analytics rather than CS. Berkeley’s Data Science major requires a Domain Emphasis, which can be Economics among many others https://data.berkeley.edu/degrees/domain-emphasis UCI’s Informatics program could be worth a look too.