I went to a UC (Irvine).
CSU's are a better deal for probably 2/3 of students. However, at a UC, the ceiling is higher, and there are more resources and opportunities for those who are resourceful enough to utilize them. I got an incredible education and that's with me being an unmotivated slacker who wasted much of what I was offered. A CSU would have been a better choice for me at the time because I was too immature.
The best course of action though if money is an issue (it wasn't for me) is to find a good CC and do your general ed there and transfer. I took some grad school prereqs at my local CC and the quality of instruction in my core sciences was better than I received at the UC pretty much just by virtue of the access we had to the (highly qualified) professors. 300 people shoved into a lecture hall with grad students running the labs vs. 30 students and 1 professor who also does the labs and knows every student quite well. Letters of rec were a breeze.
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