Advice Requested from Southern California Residents

[flere-imsaho]

So, we are taking our son (junior in high school) to CA for Spring Break to visit schools. We've decided to rent a house outside of San Diego (that we've rented before, it's lovely) because a) there are a bunch of schools he wants to see in the SD area and b) then he & I can travel north to look at other schools and stay in hotels while the wife & younger son lounge at the SD house (and heated pool).

I am familiar with the LA area's traffic issues from often going there for work, and I know roughly where things are, but basically if you wanted to visit the following schools over the course of 3 days, staring from San Diego, how would you do it?

UCLA
USC
Pepperdine
Loyola Marymount
UC Santa Barbara

My initial feeling was to, after spending Monday the 24th at SD area schools, drive up that night to Santa Barbara so we could get a reasonable start on Tuesday for UC SB & Pepperdine. Stay somewhere near Malibu or whatever that night and then do 2 of UCLA, USC, L-M on Wednesday, and then the final one on Thursday before driving back down to SD.

Thanks in advance!