quite frankly, I’ve found (through my kid) that if he wants to stay near home, then you should just focus on the California schools. I’m just saying this because we spent years going through so many options all over the country and even overseas, and in the end, he really just wanted to stay close to home. His #1a and #1b were less than an hour away (Stanford and Berkeley). For the most part, the schools in engineering that will be better than Berkeley or CPSLO or UCD or UCSC will give very little merit. And with your EFC, for those that are pretty generous, you’re still financially better off at the California publics.