Anonymous wrote:I'm from California, and would never move back there. The UC system is a mess - with impacted majors you pretty much have to assume 5 years to graduate. And that's IF you can even get into a UC school. They're soo hard to get into; there's a reason hoards of kids from CA end up at U of AZ, Oregon, Washington state schools, etc. Also, it's absurdly expensive and the public K-12 system has various woes. Maybe if you're super rich it would be an option...but then again if you're super rich, you wouldn't be uprooting your family for in-state tuition!
I second (third?) North Carolina. Lots of options in terms of colleges and amazing quality of life (and reasonable COL). Texas and Georgia also have great public universities and good QOL/COL. I'm not a huge fan of Florida but the public college options are excellent. Virginia, obviously, has great choices although I'm not sure if you'd consider that warm.
UCs are relatively inexpensive for in-state residents and they offer lot of merit based aid for in-state residents. My kid was OOS at Berkeley and was able to graduate in 3 years.