I would take the option to go to UF for free. Maybe it's more theoretical than you want but you might find you like it. Some of my favorite engineering classes

I would take the option to go to UF for free. Maybe it's more theoretical than you want but you might find you like it. Some of my favorite engineering classes were ones I knew nothing about before college. Also Florida is a pretty good school. I wouldn't sell it short. For most employers, there is little difference between Florida and USC. All things being equal, I think just about every one of them would hire a UF grad with a few interesting open source projects over a USC grad without a Github account. Definitely not worth the extra tuition money in my opinion. Try Florida for a year and transfer if you don't like it.