-
Find out how much your parents can pay/year for college? Are you eligible for need-based aid and/or merit aid?
If you are not in-state for California schools, they will cost you close to full price at $60K/year, so just do not pick a school if they have a good CS program. No point in applying if the school is unaffordable. -
Run the Net Price Calculator on each school of interest and run the numbers by your parents for input.
-
You can use Graduate rankings as a basis for determining if the CS programs are well respected, but also take a look at the CS curriculum to see if these schools offer your areas of interest.
-
Class sizes will be large in public universities, so you might also want to consider some private schools such as Harvey Mudd and Santa Clara in California. You could have a better chance at FA.
Just remember to apply to a wide variety of schools since college admissions can be unpredictable. Having competitive stats are not always enough to get into these top schools.
Best of luck.