I am hearing this pretty consistently across sources. Thank you for sharing your family’s experience. I attended a parents’ webinar with the Engineering UG Program Director and he also made a great salespitch 
Do you happen to have a link to this page? I have tried searching for FB with a bunch of different word combinations and I haven’t had any success.
Nevermind, I tried one more time after posting and got it 
Santa Clara is even less “surrounded by green space” than the UofU (where you can walk from campus up into the mountains). It’s in the middle of a major urban center and quite a trek to the open spaces of the Bay Area. And not a journey that would be straightforward without a car. (I’m also not sure how any equestrian pursuits would be possible without a car: the places I know of with horses, Woodside for example, aren’t readily accessible by public transport).
It’s an urban lifestyle, though the low rise nature of Silicon Valley and multiple small/medium towns means in practice it’s more like an endless suburb than a defined city (somewhat like the Wasatch Front outside of SLC).
If Davis was her number one, CSU shares a lot of similarities with UCD. CSU also has many student equestrian clubs—Western, Eastern, ranch horse, even polo. The university has a renowned equine sciences major. There is definitely an equine community within the university that your daughter could engage with.
CSU’s engineering program is solid. They offer many research opportunities, and there are also numerous engineering student organizations to get involved with. Fort Collins is a great community.
All in all, it would be a great choice for your daughter. I agree with others who said the question becomes: is involvement in equestrian activities and being farther from home worth $108k? There’s also the cost of giving up free housing in years 2–4.
S24 is attending UCD. My company HQ is 5 min away from Santa Clara. They are two different type campus. One has a collage town vibe with bike everywhere. The other one is surrounded by High Tech companies and million dollars suburban style homes. Without car, you cannot go anywhere. Good Luck.
You mentioned UBC at 60k. Just double-checking that that is USD and not Canadian dollars?
I don’t know how much time these equestrian pursuits require, but I do know that Formula SAE can be very time consuming. It is a great experience for engineers, especially for MechE, and part of the reason it’s a great experience is that things frequently don’t go according to plan, and it often takes extra time to get something designed, built, tested, or fixed when the inevitable screwups or other setbacks occur. Formula SAE is notorious for this.
For example my son spent close to 50 hours last week manufacturing composite body parts for his team’s car, on top of all the other stuff he had to do last week (classes, lab reports, midterm, campus job, etc), and then someone cut one of the parts slightly too short, and now they have to manufacture that part again 
Anyway, your D might ultimately end up finding that it’s hard to balance two very substantial extracurricular pursuits. Just a thought
I’m only laughing because when S23s lab was cancelled, it was because the SAE team “set the place on fire”.
While this is true, I find CSU to be a very “pick your own adventure” school. Most kids I know are involved in multiple (often very diverse from each other ) activities.
I’d agree if we were talking about solo activities, but IHSA and Formula SAE are team competitions. When you’re part of a team, you’ve got to show up—spreading yourself too thin doesn’t just affect you, it affects everyone. Unless these two compete in different seasons, I think it would be difficult or impossible to do both.
Yep - at least it was when I made the conversion a few weeks ago.
Friends’ daughter went to CSU (chose it over Tufts and Cornell) and one big factor was that she could take her horse. Her parents agreed to pay for that because of the cost savings on tuition, but she liked the school better so picked CSU. They ended up not having to pay much for the horse as this girl was a hard worker and worked at the vet hospital to earn the money. She loved the hospital and the opportunities it gave her. She graduates from vet school next month, and she and her horse have been there for 8 years.
CSU has a different feel to it for those into horses because of the vet school and the surrounding area. The people like living in an agricultural area. My daughter went to Wyoming and I feel it also has that same feel. If your daughter doesn’t want to stay with the organized riding clubs at CSU, there would be others in the area too.
If money matters, go to UU over CSU, but CSU is not a ‘settling for’ school. Even when I was looking at schools many years ago, some of the Denver high schools were CU schools and others were CSU schools. Not really an explanation of why, that’s just how it was.
That is definitely something to take into consideration. The college years will provide lots of opportunities to practice prioritizing and compromising.
This is great information and a very helpful perspective. Thank you for sharing! D25 has already begun exploring employment/work study opportunities at the Vet School. Although she doesn’t want to be a vet, she’d love to be able to take some equine science classes. We also have some extended family with horses about 30 minutes from the CSU campus.
She created a new pro/con list this weekend, using all our new insights. CSU has the clear advantage in all areas except cost, but we can still manage it without debt so that is okay.
Yes, I’ve heard about stuff exploding and “the car was on fire” two times already from S23
Closing the loop to say D25 is CSU Bound! After touring the engineering program and meeting with students and the equestrian team coach, it became clear that this was the best fit for her and worth the additional cost.
One argument for paying more that I haven’t seen made very often is - where is their best chance at success? I’m defining success holistically to include: academic + social, emotional, and financial health. Engineering is difficult, and although most ABET schools will offer the same learning outcomes, the approach to teaching seems to vary quite a bit. If that approach doesn’t align well with how a student learns best, it may not be the “best deal.” In the end, we also determined that having access to a variety of equestrian opportunities is important for her social and emotional health. While it will mean some compromises for our family, we can accomplish this debt-free and help her launch in a financially healthy way.
We’ve struggled with giving up the very low-cost opportunity at the U, but I do think that CSU will be the best place for her to grow and succeed academically, and in all the other ways that are crucial for a successful transition to adulthood. Thank you to all who provided their insights during this process!
S23 is at CSU and loving it. Feel free to DM me with any questions.
Congratulations! 
I know this was a difficult decision. 