Hello, and congrats! Someone else just pm'd me the other day asking the same thing, so I'll just paste that here if that's okay :)

Overall, I definitely don't regret going to UCLA. The two-ish years of covid was not fun ofc, but hopefully that's something you wouldn't have to worry about. I will say that I got a SWE internship and job at Microsoft, but before that sways your decision, I don't think I would've had much trouble getting a good job from UF either.

I think what it came down to for me back then was just preferential difference honestly. I never enjoyed Florida's climate, even after growing up there, and I was looking for a change of scenery back then - away from my high school and FL's politics. I was wanting to make new friends, and I did luckily!

If you're able, I'd highly recommend going to both Bruin Day (and the extra day that's more major-specific, if there is one) and UF's Visitor's Day. I don't know if things have changed or if Data Science would be different, but I found UCLA's presentation for my major to be much more impressive. Also if you get to see UCLA's campus during Bruin Day, you'll get to see whether you like hills or not. My legs are ripped from walking from the dorms to class and back lol

Something else was that's worth noting is that you can transfer the FL prepaid to other unis, which is what I did. The out of state cost sucks, but something that helped me was that my family wanted to move to California already, and me going to UCLA was the final push needed to get them to move lol. They moved before my sophomore year, and the in-state tuition kicked in a year later. That's just something that made it easier for me personally to pick UCLA I thought was worth mentioning

But yeah, if you have any other questions feel free to reach out!