When I was a student, I met a guy who would go to school one semester, then work the next+summer in construction. Then back to school. He seemed perfectly hap

When I was a student, I met a guy who would go to school one semester, then work the next+summer in construction. Then back to school. He seemed perfectly happy to pay the school bills this way. Some years later when I returned to undergrad education in CS, I took advantage of several summer internships and coops. The money I earned through those basically covered the completion of my undergrad CS degree. Maybe you could do the same? Does this USC program support coops? I would guess that you could make a large portion of the costs through that type of work. I will say that my first suggestion echoes many other comments on this page. Don't incur a bunch of debt for undergrad education. Go to the cheap school and work hard to do really well. Definitely try to get internships and work experience. I might go so far to suggest that you look at the institutions you are considering and see which ones have particularly well-formed, visible internship programs in place. My CS undergrad program was incredibly focused on the transition from school to work. It made getting internship and coop opportunities much easier. My (top 25) CS grad school was almost entirely focused on turning out PhD candidates into academia and had almost no real industry network to speak of. As a matter of fact, the several job offers I had in hand when finishing my MS in CS were with companies I had interned with during my undergrad days. My grad school professor network resulted in not a single job lead.