It looks like his tentative Senior schedule is showing an increase in rigor which is favored by the UC’s and Cal states. UC Honors classes even if they are not AP will be considered rigorous.
Plenty of school options in Southern California. I had one son attend UC Davis (Environmental Science) and another at SDSU (Computer Science), both had great experiences, excellent academics and are doing very well post grad.
Both son’s mainly applied to California schools: UC’s and CSU’s with the exception of NAU (Northern Arizona University) which offered a free application and early admission decision. Both son’s had no interest in going out of state since California offered to so many options.
Definitely set a budget and try to get some school visits in before the application period to see his likes and dislikes.
The Cal states have not posted if they will be test blind for the 2023 admission cycle, but the UC’s will be test blind through 2025 as of now. Again decisions can change so having test scores can only help.
UC’s and CSU’s use 10-11th grades in their GPA calculation. Only exception is Cal Poly SLO which used 9-11th grades.
The Cal states use a capped weighted GPA calculation with up to 8 semesters of UC approved Honors, AP/IB or DE classes taken 10-11th grades.
The UC’s use 3 calculated UC GPA’s: Unweighted, Capped Weighted and Fully Weighted. The UC GPA calculator is linked in post 2.
UC Capped weighted GPA= CSU Capped weighted GPA (as long as no DE/CC courses are taken).
The CSU application is pretty straightforward. No essays, no EC’s considered (exception Cal Poly SLO where hours of EC’s are listed but not EC descriptions). If the CSU’s go back to using the ACT and SAT for admission purposes, then they admit based on an eligibility index: Calculation using SAT or ACT scores and CSU GPA. I will not go into details now until a decision is posted about the CSU test requirements for 2023.
The CSU’s give priority to local applicants (with the local admission area) so I have linked the CSU local area’s: https://www.calstate.edu/apply/freshman/documents/csulocaladmission-serviceareas.pdf
For the UC’s: GPA, HS course rigor and personal insight questions are considered Very Important.
If he finds that he wants to pursue CS in college, I would emphasize that he should apply for the CS major and not Undecided.
Best of luck to him and do not hesitate to ask questions.