UCB Regents vs USC Trustee (Full Tuition) - Econ/Business

My son just got UCB Regents yesterday with $10000 in 4 years. He also got USC Trustee full tuition early this week. As a middle class family, I guess we are not qualified for any need based financial aid. My son is interested in Economy/History and will probably do business in the future. We toured both campuses and liked them both. We live in Bay area so about 40 minutes drive to UCB.

The net price for UCB will be about $33K and for USC is about $17K.

If just from the ranking of business school, seems that Haas is higher than Marshall in USC. But we have concerns that UCB has deficits for last 5 years, will it cause more classes/programs cut? USC seems have more opportunities on study aboard/research etc.

Thanks a lot for your suggestion.

For Haas itself, I wouldn’t be concerned about budget cuts. Haas is very small and has a lot of money, i.e. they’re currently building a $60m “North Academic Building” that is entirely funded with private donations from alumni and friends of the school.

They put a lot of money into their students that students of other colleges at UCB would kill for.

It is definitely above Marshall and there really aren’t many undergrad programs that are above it, just a few.

Main issue with Haas is that one has to apply to the business major in one’s second year. Admission is competitive.
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/Undergrad/ucb_admissions.html

Economics at UCB does offer a more math-heavy option if the student is interested in preparing for PhD study in economics (in addition, the student should take additional math and statistics courses, as described at https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/undergrad/current/preparing-for-grad-school ). The economics major does require a 3.0 GPA in its prerequisites to declare.

Where did your son end up going to?