Just a thought:
Why not try the privates in California? Harvey Mudd and Pomona have some merit dollars. USC would love the musical background.
Harvey Mudd and USC are on our original list. They both have great science programs. We visited the campus during last winter break. Harvey Mudd is little small and quite. I heard they have good internship with JPL. USC came across above our middle class family dream 
Also, we love the campus of Santa Clara University with all the new buildings and its campus setting. For bio- science program, can it be our safety?
I wouldn’t consider Santa Clara a safety unless you personally know of student’s from your high school who have a good rate of admission there. It is a good school.
Applications to the privates might surface with surprises.
USC may surprise you if he wants to “audition” for the band. Lots of my former students and my sister’s USC classmates were surprised about the offers for USC dollars seeking band students.
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Yes, @AustenNut, we have a friend’s DS transferred from Occidental Univ. to Univ of Denver. He loved it. Great suggestion.
I actually mentioned Regis which is in Denver. I thought about the U. of Denver but wasn’t sure if it would get close enough to your budget in price. If it would, though, I’d add that one, too! And if you were to go out to Denver, you could visit both colleges.
@aunt_bea I had a professor Bob Bea at UCB 
Santa Clara is one of the hidden gems in North CA. Not many student from our suburban high school picked it, we guessed, because its price and catholic background, but we were on the campus and fall in love with it. We definitely take a second look as a “match”. Also, great to hear the UCS band consideration. We did not think about that.
Keep the suggestion coming. 
I don’t think it is a safety…but they are test optional until 2023 which is to your advantage.
I would run the net price calculator for SCU to see if it comes in at an affordable price.
My kid is a bioengineering/biology graduate if SCU and we all really felt the school was terrific.
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Thanks for your comment. That was one of my most curious questions. Does bio-engineering graduate have an easy time to get hired. I read some industrial hiring managers thought that Mech Engr and EE Engr would have a better time to get hired. Bio-engineering major does not get into design and all the practical engineering, so they will be hired only to do processing QA/QC job at a bio company.
Not sure about the future. Any feedback from your kid would be great 
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You could take a look at UCB’s career survey at https://career.berkeley.edu/survey/survey or College Scorecard at https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/ to get comparisons of career outcomes by major (at any given college for College Scorecard).
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Depends on your leads.
My daughter took some bioengineering courses at her SUNY.
At that time, the professor told the students said that the current graduates would not find jobs, “immediately”, in this field and that the “industry” would need to inject a large amount of cash from private investors to “initiate” the field. That was in ~2010.
She has friends that are working with engineers in prosthetic development but the job expectations haven’t materialized in the manner which they had been predicting.
Before he commits to this field, he needs to question the bioengineering profs and find out where these graduates have found jobs. BLS information shows the same types of job availability. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm
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Washington State is part of the WUE tuition exchange. It offers Bioengineering, Music, and good skiing within a couple of hours. He might also like the Pullman campus if he liked the Redlands campus. Plus, how he ends up with his SAT, the possibility of getting into the honors program, and all the benefits that come with it.
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Thanks, @James_West , we have read about Pullman and we will add both Washington State, Pullman and Redlands on our list to study. Great suggestion.
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@aunt_bea Thanks for your honest feedback. It is definitely a puzzle. Studying engineering is already a full plate. While combining with biology and medical classes, biomedical engineering covers three fields at once. The first 2 years of a 4-year college will only cover some basic math and science classes. We can see two years of upper division classes would not be sufficient to have deep understanding of each specialty. That is why some from the industries indicated that a graduate degree is necessary. If DS picks the biomedical engineering major, we need to plan for those as well.
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My D is a bioengineering major. At her school they say about 1/3 of the BioE’s get jobs right out of school, 1/3 go to grad school and 1/3 go to med school. But I also sat through a presentation her freshmen year where the presenter said they don’t necessarily encourage pre-meds to major in BioE. It’s a hard route to take when grades are very important for med school admission. But, obviously many kids go that route and get into med school so it works out. And they have good career options should they decide not to go to med school vs a biology major.
As for careers, lots of kids transfer out of Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering because they hear job prospects are better for Mechanical Engineering. My D thought about it but she does not want to be a Mechanical Engineer, it’s the BIO part of Bioengineering that interests her. She is interested in medical device design. She has a great internship lined up this summer as an R&D Intern for a medical device design company and a lot of her classmates have internships and jobs with major medical device companies (Medtronic, Boston Scientific, GE, Stryker, etc.) and some go into more chemistry/pharma type fields like with companies like J&J. I know this is antidotal, and maybe the job market is harder for Bioengineering majors, but we weren’t going to push our D into a major she’s less interested in over one she is passionate about.
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Back on picking colleges. We have kept a record of where our DS’s high school top 10 graduates where they landed in 2020 and 2021, as listed below. The 2022 graduate list would be out in May. It seems that UCs are their graduates’ most favored landing colleges. Majors are spread-out, mostly into science majors. This is probably typical in central California. Ivies or T20 are probably out of touch from most families. The UCs ($14k) and CSU’s tuition ($9k) are the most value colleges in CA, I guess.
Unless there are surprises in 22, our DS probably would follow this trend. Any feedback on this?
2020 Graduates
Rank HS GPA M/F Admitted College Major
10 4.508 M UC Irvine Biomedical Engineering
9 4.517 F UC Berkeley Molecular and Cell Biology
8 4.5273 F UC Davis Neuro-physiology and Behavior Biology
7 4.5345 M UC Irvine Data Science
6 4.5370 F UC Davis Biomedical Engineering
5 4.5455 M UN Reno Pre-Nursing
4 4.5614 F UC Berkeley Engineering
3 4.5614 M Univ of Pacific Pre-Pharmacy
2 4.6071 F UC Davis Neuro-physiology and Behavior Biology
1 4.6545 M UCLA Biology
2021 Graduates
Rank HS GPA M/F Admitted College Major
10 4.49 F UC Irvine Computer Science
9 4.50 F UC Irvine Molecular and Cognitive Science
8 4.53 F UCLA Psychobiology
7 4.54 M UC Davis Global Disease Prevention
6 4.55 M UC Berkeley Molecular and Cell Biology
5 4.57 M UC Davis Computer Science and Engineering
4 4.58 M UCLA Math
3 4.59 M UCLA Computer Science
2 4.60 M UCLA Comparative Literature/ English
1 4.67 M Cornell Computer Science
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@PrdMomto1 Glad to see your DD’s persistence and outcome. We are just at the beginning of this long journey. Your DD’s case gives us some hopes. Just like many pre-med or pre-health students, we encountered many skepticisms, rumors of burnout, and are told to have a plan B. Bio-engineering is a good plan B, but as you experienced, there are cons, such as grade deflation. We watched Dr. Ryan Gray’s speaking video at UC Davis. Just watch the first 5 minutes of the video, it is very inspiring - “If you really want to, you can do it.” We probably need to watch him many times during this journey. 
Remember that pre-meds can do any major, not just biology or biomedical engineering, although non-overlapping high volume majors like engineering majors other than biomedical or maybe chemical may be difficult to fit together schedule-wise.
If he likes and is strong in math, he may want to consider statistics, data science, or applied math as a major, since these tend to have stronger job prospects than biology at the bachelor’s level, and statistics and data science are useful in medicine (many medical research papers make use of statistics to infer the effectiveness or lack thereof of some treatment), but the volume of course work is less than in engineering majors.
U of Nevada Reno would be an affordable safety (WUE + merit), only 15 miles from the CA border, close to Tahoe skiing, and very solid STEM.
U of Utah is another - a bit farther but still pretty easy to get to. Strong STEM, strong music, incredibly close to great skiing, and very affordable (generous merit, and either WUE or the path to residency after the first year).
Worth weighing these flagships in nearby states vs. the CSU safeties he’s considering. Your list seems good, but in California, some schools in neighboring states can be closer to home than schools at the far end of California, so look more at actual ease of access and potential cost than just at whether it’s in CA. Sometimes the non-CA schools can offer more flexibility for a kid who’s not 100% set on his major.
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Yes I’d agree with U of Utah as a good safety, which with WUE is the same price as the UCs. For an outdoorsy kid it is great, and easy to get to from CA (we are in NorCal). D18 is graduating this year and it’s high on S23’s list after his sister’s experience.
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