UC Merced is the newest in the UC system. You should be aware of the weather in the valley [not my cup of tea], but [on the plus side] the buildings are new. I don’t think it really has a reputation yet. CSU schools are generally viewed as a notch below UC. I think at one point they were not even allowed to have graduate programs; that was not their function. That changed, and there is probably an overlap now between the top CSU schools and the less-highly-related UCs. Look, a CSU is probably never going to be a match for Berkeley or UCLA or Davis, but San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and maybe others are probably on a par with Merced and Riverside.