Let's try to get back on topic for one moment here:
Say I did have filthy-rich parents. In this case, would the school be a good option?
Essentially, would you back it if it was a fully funded program?
Let's stick with the filthy-rich parents idea, because then it's a little less counterfactual. I might recommend it, but only if you can reasonably guarantee you'll end up being in the top 10-20 percent. How does one get in the top tier at PAU? Working hard is part of it, but part of it is luck - you have to work to get attention from professors, and sometimes people aren't successful.
It's entirely possibly you could toil for 4-5 years at PAU, get thrown in with a dissertation project you don't much care for, get no publications (maybe a poster or two), and strike out for internship for 1,2,3 years until you get desperate and take a CAPIC slot, and then proceed to guarantee yourself mediocre (at best) prospects for the rest of your career.
Best case scenario is you're a good networker, you figure out where the hot research groups and professors are, get yourself some crackerjack practicums, churn out a half-dozen publications, and do real well for internship. But again, there's nothing guaranteed at PAU.
Typical funded R1 programs (or funded clinical psych. programs of reasonable quality) work with a front-end filter. They only take the top 1-5% of applicants.
PAU and other arguably "top tier" FSPS programs work in the opposite fashion. They take virtually all applicants, and then filter them out, at best, several years down the line (after they've been drained of 150K or more of student loan monies). Sometimes they don't filter them out at all, like the psychologist I know who graduated from PAU on the 10-year-program.
I am definitely trying my best to get in to more respectable funded programs.
What I'm asking is if it's okay to fall back to this if debt is not a problem.
You'd be taking a risk.
Also, if people could give me constructive answers instead of just telling me I'm a spoiled dickhead, I would really appreciate it. I already know I'm spoiled and don't deserve it, and trust me I'm doing my best to get into great programs.
However, Palo Alto seems to me at the moment the best thing to fall back to because it's close to home for me (and I'm very family-oriented) and it seems to be a more high-caliber FSPS.
So, to reiterate, if Palo Alto was a fully funded school, would you recommend it?
Thank you for your answers to a clueless undergrad.
I'm a spoiled dickhead, so join the club.