Nothing wrong with CA schools in general but we just have a huge population with many very qualified applicants which tend to apply to same schools. For CSULB specifically, 95% of the admitted students were CA HS students. 99% of the Freshman enrolled students are CA residents while less than 1% were Non-residents.
No system is perfect but CA has 9 UC’s all ranked in the top 100 of Universities, 23 Cal states, 81 Private colleges and 116 Community colleges so if a student wants a college education, then there are many options. A student can only attend 1 school.
Not sure you have seen this discussion thread but your dissatisfaction is not unique to California College admissions: https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/is-the-college-admissions-process-broken/