The private schools usually have generous scholarships. You may want to wait for Financial aid/scholarships offers to make decision.
The education quality, research oppertunies, alumni network, potential earnings /… may be more important than affordability.
I think most of people will choose Standford VS UCD.
The studies show that SAT is highly correlated with IQ score. The statistical data proved the students with higher SAT scores trend to be more succesful at school, of course many other factors contribute to the success.
I’m a Stanford alum. I do not think Stanford offers such a great advantage in these areas that it would overshadow affordability.
If it’s affordable for the family (either full pay or with financial aid), and the kid wants to attend, that’s great. The cost benefit analysis is up to the family. However, I personally wouldn’t make financial sacrifices or take out loans to send my kid to Stanford.
Good luck to the OP in the remainder of the admissions cycle! Hope your son finds the right fit and finds a way to make it affordable, too 
Yup, there is no way I would go into debt for Stanford if I had a solid UC alternative, as UC Davis would be, As a middle income family, we would absolutely choose Davis over Stanford, if that were the decision.
UCs and CSUs do not consider the non-academic-merit factors of legacy or development status in admissions, unlike Stanford.
It is very well understood these days that a CS degree is employable from most any school. You can work at Apple, Google, Tesla, etc with a CS/CE/CSE/SE degree from CSUs and from the “less prestigious” UCs.
If the student likes the fit at those other “name” schools, and the family can afford it, and everyone likes to say the school name to their family and friends, then go for it!
Finally, UC Davis CS/CE/CSE is clearly not a safety for anyone, with a <20% admit rate.
The premise of this thread seems to be that Stanford is so far superior and better at selecting students than is UC Davis, that a waitlist determination by Davis must be objectively wrong, offensive, and/or motivated by factors that shouldn’t matter.
Whatever one thinks of Davis or Stanford for an individual student, that premise seems to be severely flawed. Stanford and Davis don’t have identical objectives. They aren’t looking for identical students.
Not to mention athletic ability has a much smaller impact on the overall composition of the student body at the UCs/CSUs.
If you live in TX, the top 6% TX applicants get in UT Austin automatically, EECs & PIQ will not have impact on the admission for top 6% TX.
Fair enough to TX residents! CA needs to make the similar changes, our top 1% CA applicants has NO guarantee to get in any UC expect UC Mecerd, not sure what “good fit” they talk about… Did those top 1% CA applicants already demonstrate accedemic excellence? Most of top appliciants are active members of school club, sport teams, state/national level contests. As high CA tax payers, we feel very disappointed and stressed, our kids have to be excellent outside of campus as no guarantee to get in Cal and UCLA for top 1% CA applicants, which added burdens and stress to both students and parents.
The top 9% of CA HS students are guaranteed admission into a UC. There are a lot of Texas residents that are very dissatisfied with their admission process. I believe there is no perfect process and the process can always benefit from some improvements but I would never encourage CA to adopt the Texas system.
ELC status (top 9%) CA residents have guarantee to UC Mecerd.
UT Austin is top 1 UC in TX. UC Mercerd is bottom 1 UC in CA. What’s their rankings?
UCLA has like twice the amount of applicants compared to Ut Austin. That’s something to consider.
We applied to UT and I followed the UT Austin tread for a while to know their guarantee admission does not guarantee major and for many applicants, that’s their soft rejection because most Engineering applicants will not accept a spot into humanities or linguistics.
I don’t understand what you are talking about?
If you are talking about rankings such as US News, UT Austin is ranked below UCB, UCLA, UCSD, and UC Davis…
Are you all going together? 
So the top 6% of California HS students would be admitted to which UC campus?
Based on application numbers for CA Freshman, there would be not enough room at 1 UC Campus to accommodate the top 6%. Then do you make it top 5% or top 3%. Whom decides which UC campus is #1? So many things wrong with this idea.
UC Merced is ranked above Riverside and Santa Cruz by US News. University of California earns top spots in 2023-24 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings | University of California
I have a flight out to Austin next weekend for a campus visit. But the problem is S24 didn’t get in…
Top 1% of what? Lots of parents consider their kids “top 1%” but they don’t often consider that many of their classmates are similarly situated. The Texas program is based on class rank for individual high schools, same as one of the California programs. So at high performing high schools (presumably the OPs small boarding school qualifies) there will be lots of excellent students who do not qualify in either state.
Also, my understanding is that the Tx program doesn’t guarantee admittance to the more popular majors. So for example a student wishing to study CS or Engineering at UT Austin has no such guarantee.
As for UC Merced (not “Mecerd” as you keep writing), it is a very good school as are all the UCs. Guaranteed admission to any of them is an excellent option. Plus there are plenty of very good Cal State options.
Rankings are of limited value but since you asked, currently Merced is ranked 60th in the nation by USNWR National rankings, comparable with or above most state flagships. If UT Austin were a UC, it would be ranked middle of the pac, below UC Davis and UC San Diego, and very close to UCI and UCSB, and not that far above Merced.
Top 6% in Texas only guarantees you a spot at UT into the university, not for your major. Every year tons of auto-admit kids who apply to competitive STEM majors, Engineering, and Business, do not get into their major and get put into undeclared Liberal Arts. Top 1-2% kids who meet every criteria cannot get access to their flagship state school for the major they want. UT has to auto-admit all kids in the top 6% which makes up about 75% of the incoming class. That leaves only 25% left for non-auto admit and OOS, making the acceptance rate for those kids closer to 11%.
The next best UT system school in terms of rankings is UT Dallas which is ranked #115 vs UT being #32…so there’s not a close second in terms of back up options. A&M is a great option but that’s about it for public schools and it’s not for everyone. Baylor, TCU, Rice, and SMU are all good but private and incredibly expensive.
“Stanford Redwoods” sounds more catchy and makes sense - there are a ton of redwood trees in the Bay Area.