While I’m inclined to agree with @Catcherinthetoast on ignoring the cost factor as your parents have advised, the only nuance I will add here as a parent of an in-state (and very happy) UCLA student is that it has been my observation from the UCLA Facebook Parent group that the OOS parents are very quick to get angry with the administration or the general bureaucracy of a huge public institution. They are quick to say: “we are paying all this money” when things as benign as broken washing machines and false fire alarms keep their kids from washing their sheets or from getting a full night’s sleep (this happens every year) to way more serious problems (such as what’s happening now with another TA strike—this one tied to the administration’s response on the breakup of the pro-Palestinian encampment).
In some ways I don’t blame them. If I were shelling out 75k a year rather than my 30-35k or so, I’d probably be quick to anger too. And these are situations that can happen at any institution, public or private. But if you feel you are paying way more than the value you are receiving, then you are apt to allow many things to frustrate you.
It’s just food for thought—not meant to sway a decision other than to encourage a conversation about how things can and will be annoying at times and that your folks go into it knowing that.
Please please clarify with your parents that paying full price for UCLA…with younger siblings in the college pipeline…Will not entail loans they need to take, and that they feel comfortable paying these costs.
We paid pretty much full costs for two kids at pricey private schools…but we didn’t need to take any loans as parents.
If your parents really can support you financially at UCLA, please give them a huge thank you and a big hug. This is a very generous gift. And some families wouldn’t pay this additional coat even if they could afford to.
UW is an excellent choice. If CA is calling you, I want to assure you that it will still be there once you have a degree. It’s possible you could even garner an internship there in the summer while attending UW. If we are voting, I’d stay the course at UW.
I’d recommend you poke around at the course descriptions here, specifically in the EE and CS departments. There are additional courses covering computational linguistics offered by the Ling department.
You will be taking all of the same lower division prereqs as a regular CS major would. The only difference is you will not take one lower division hardware course nor the multivariable calculus/differential equations courses.
As a Ling + CS major, you also get “first pass” enrollment into all CS courses, and then as a Data Science Engineering minor you would get “first pass” enrollment into any related EE course you would want.