I graduated from Georgia Tech's CS program in December, so I can hopefully give you a few useful pointers. First of all, while GT is definitely your top (and r

I graduated from Georgia Tech's CS program in December, so I can hopefully give you a few useful pointers. First of all, while GT is definitely your top (and really only) choice in the state for any of those three departments, you don't necessarily have to start out there. Look up Southern Polytechnic State University - it's in Marietta, just a short ways outside Atlanta, and it has a few serious perks for your situation: - It's a whole lot cheaper (about $10k less) than GT is, particularly for students who are not in-state. - It is an engineering-focused university that will get you up to speed reasonably quickly and let you start taking some classes that will transfer well to GT (but not as well or smoothly as you might expect, so be careful). - Transfering from Southern Poly to GT is almost a guarantee -- as long as you do well there, you are pretty much certain to be admitted. Second, whatever university you wind up going to, be sure to get involved in activities outside of class. They don't all have to be focused on programming or startup stuff, either -- my time working on GT's student newspaper helped in my job search nearly as much as my degree itself. Plus, the things I did had the additional benefit of exposing me to a much wider group of people than the typical CS crowd, and keeping me sane during tougher times. Last, don't give up, especially once you actually get into university. GT's engineering, science and CS programs tend to smack people down in their first couple of semesters, and the worst thing you could do is let that get you down to the point of dropping back to your current situation.