@gluttonforstress, There are a lot of threads on the parents forum that discuss this – or, more precisely, the difficulty of explaining such money matters to starry eyed (and name-brand conscious) teenagers! Because money is still fairly abstract for kids, you could try the comparison approach: is a BA worth 6 new Mercedes Benz? UCSB actually has more Nobel Prizes; where would you rather hang out after classes: on the beach or in the hood? Another way to make UCSB more attractive is to talk about having money available for such very enriching (but expensive) opportunities as study abroad or unpaid summer internships in fun places.
When my daughter was looking at schools, I told her that she had to have a SOLID ACADEMIC reason for each of the schools she wanted that cost more than our (quite good) state flagship. She couldn’t just say, “I want to go to Boston University because living in Boston sounds cool.” There was no way I was going to pay 3 times the state flagship because daughter wanted to be cool in Boston. Having to specify in a concrete way why USC is worth $200K more than UCSB might take some wind out of your son’s sails, unless, that is, he wants to major in film. Don’t ask him that question if he wants to major in film. (Smile.)