I think it rests on a lot of different factors.
In terms of budget, it really depends on which California school we are talking about. UCSF, for example, relies very little on state funding for its yearly budget, despite being a "public" school. Arguably, the east coast is "better" in the sense that there are more big named private schools with a huge focus on research and consistent NIH funding.
In terms of research, it also depends on what you want to study. It's arguable that computational neuroscience is really the future; if that is indeed the case, than the east coast is also a better fit as most programs here have a heavier emphasis on computation.
Fundamentally though, at our stage, I think we should just focus on which PIs we want to work with.