I choose to commute from home to a local school that most people think of as the slacker school and rather attend some other school in the UC system.
It costs my family just under $7k a year compared to my friends at a UC spending $25k+ a year given that none of us get any financial aid. By the time I finish in a total of three years, I’ll have spent less than a year at a UC and graduate debtless.
–I wish more people looked into the lower tier schools instead of brushing them away and heading off to the schools they’ve worked so hard to get into but with no idea of what they want to major in / future career plans and realizing that their family can’t financially afford the UC school.