I am the sort of person who does not see much value in the term “prestige” as in practice that seems to mostly refer to something like fame/popularity among peers and family. To me that is not a particularly useful concept when making a decision about your college.
In contrast, identifying colleges that have a good reputation among next-step gatekeepers of interest might be worth doing. But your peers and family are rarely going to be a good proxy for such next-step gatekeepers. Indeed, normally there are going to be many colleges which have such a good reputation among the people who will actually matter, but which might be entirely unknown to most of your peers and family.
OK, so personally, I would advise looking for colleges which are affordable, fun, and have a good reputation among the people who matter, whether or not that makes them “prestigious” in the peers/family sense.
And as for that–your budget is going to be a significant factor, and that is OK. But if you ran the NPC at Providence and they did not estimate enough need aid, that is indicative that you might have a pretty limited set of options for getting on budget.
One obvious observation is California has a very robust set of public college options, and in fact a long list of them fit that requirement of having a good reputation among the people who actually matter. I know that a lot of kids in California, and sometimes their parents, can get caught up in “prestige” competitions, but it would really not do you any good to let that matter to you.
So, you should start by checking if those colleges would be affordable for you, and then you can calculate your UC and CSU GPAs and see where you might be competitive.
In terms of out of state options, if colleges like Providence don’t get on budget with just need, the question then is how close, and whether realistic merit would close the gap. Like, some good colleges to consider with your interests would be Liberal Arts Colleges like St Olaf (which has a Nursing program), or Gettysburg (which has a Nursing partnership with Hopkins where you get an MSN). You might try running the NPCs at those colleges, and then if you are close enough you might get the rest of the way with merit.
That said, my understanding is when it comes to affordable paths into nursing, the vast, vast majority of people needing an affordable path do something in-state, including the Associates paths. Which again may involve institutions your peers and family have never heard of before, but who cares? You get to be a nurse without being saddled by a bunch of debt, and that is plenty of reward (for people who want to be nurses).