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Are there any programs that offer tuition for a percentage of future earnings? Would any investor want to pay for my college for a large stake in my first startup?

No and no.

I sympathize enormously with your predicament here, but your best option is primarily going to be loans. You can also spend the next several months aggressively essay-writing for hundreds of $500 to $2k a pop scholarships given out by numerous private organizations in the US. I did it like a pretty serious part-time job and shaved about $13k off the cost of college.

If the $100k+ in marginal indebtedness gives you pause, consider strongly whether the marginal increase in your employability is different with the degrees. My guess: not that much.

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.

University of Florida would work well for you under those circumstances. You can get the practical side by working on your own GitHub projects--I know young people who have been there and done that.

Gainesville isn't appealing for everyone. For some just as a city [the former "Hogtown"], for others perhaps because of the continued exposure to obnoxious sports rivalries typical in the Southeast.

It can even come down to which fraction of one's graduating class is attending which school and other factors which often disappear once people actually get to university.

My comment based on I also have strong personal reasons for not wanting to go to UF, from the OP,

I lived and studied in Gainesville at two different phases of my life. I have longtime friends who still live there, more who graduated and moved away. I have high school friends who many years ago went and left in their teens because it wasn't the right environment for them.

Now I live in a southern university town and meet young people whose college selection is strongly shaped by sports team affiliation. That's American high school and university culture whether or not anyone thinks it should be. At the OP's age I categorically rejected considering FSU for entirely non academic reasons - my high school class broke FSU or UF in part based on who we did not want to go to school with.

[edit: I am assuming that the Florida Prepaid Plan and Bright Futures Scholarships can still be used at any of the State's Universities. I know that was the case a few years ago, but with all the financial and political upheaval following the housing bust, it's only an assumption]

UF isn't the only State University with degrees in computing. FSU is fairly well regarded academically in general. It focused on super computing in the 90's [1]. Historically UCF has had solid practically oriented computing and engineering programs because of its strong ties to industry and origin as a commuter school and large number of working students [2].

South Florida and FIU are also options which would be low cost in your situation.

At the undergraduate level you'll get out what you put in. If you confirm computer science as what you want to do and pursue it with rigor, name schools will be an option at the graduate level. One thing about academia is that performance tends to open doors.

It is probably worth visiting these departments and talking to faculty. I'd encourage you to go in with an open mind wherever you go and to form opinions from direct experience- getting better opinions about a field is why we go to college.

Good luck.

[1] https://www.sc.fsu.edu/ and https://rcc.fsu.edu/services/hpc

[2] http://cs.ucf.edu/

> At the undergraduate level you'll get out what you put in. If you confirm computer science as what you want to do and pursue it with rigor, name schools will be an option at the graduate level. One thing about academia is that performance tends to open doors.

Right. If you do well for your Bachelors, with a good GPA, good subject understanding, and a good relationship with some of your professors, you can always get an MS from a better school. Finances may be less of a problem then as you may get a research position or be a TA for an undergrad class when you are getting your MS. For professors you get along with, or if you are particularly interested in their area of expertise, be sure to develop a small relationship with them, go to their office hours even if you don't need to, and maybe they have a friend at MIT, Stanford etc. and can write you a letter of recommendation for them to get into their graduate school.

If you tell people you got your Phd from Stanford and your MS from MIT, where you got your undergrad from is suddenly of much less concern. It's not all about the name anyway, a motivated UF undergrad is probably better off in the long run then an unmotivated undergrad at a slightly more prestigious school. If you spend five months in a class studying assembly and processors and your professor is not so good, read the textbook, write some assembly on your own, read other textbooks and books. I often went beyond the necessary, required reading if the subject was interesting and/or important.

Also look for research lab openings for undegrads at your school. Talk to the other CS students at your school, the department advisors etc., get on mailing lists, go to events, related campus clubs etc.