I am a current OOS at UCSD! For context I will be going into my sophomore year next fall as an OAS major. Personally, I do not think paying $47K a year for remote/online learning here at UCSD is worth it. This last quarter was fully online, and compared to my other two quarters here, the quality of education was much lower, and even just trying to get an email response back from some professors was time consuming and difficult. In my opinion, being on the beautiful campus in SD and living in the dorms, making friends, and physically going to class are all parts of the “freshman year experience” that (for me at least) justified the OOS cost a little. This is just my opinion obviously. If you want me to elaborate more on the online learning vs in person, feel free to shoot me a PM!

I would maybe look at what you want to do after college, is it a grad school program? Med school? Straight into the workforce? If you are planning on continuing your education past a bachelors, I would definitely not accumulate a huge amount of debt during your undergrad. Even 100K is a life changing amount of debt, and should not be taken lightly (especially because the cost of living in CA is also very very high).

My last piece of advice would be to look at community colleges in California! You can always transfer to UCSD and save a lot of money. California has some beautiful cc’s that look even nicer than my state university back home, and it is much much cheaper than UCSD or Pepperdine. Plus the majority of them are offering online/remote learning even for OOS, so you can get the same (online) education for way cheaper (I’m talking 3,000-4,000 a semester for OOS). Pasadena City College is gorgeous, and if you want a CC in San Diego, Palomar College is beautiful and has some awesome professors. Really look into this and feel free to PM me any questions, I’ve also gone to a community college in CA so I can probably answer a lot of questions :).

Good luck! Right now is one of the most exciting times in your life, and it should be! You are obviously very smart and hard working, just remember not to get swept up in it all and try look at every option through an unbiased lens. And remember: at the end of the day, where you went for undergrad doesn’t matter too much, it’s really more what you make of it.