BYU. Current tuition is $5,620 for full-time semesters - it was about half that when I started 10 years ago. Cost of living nearby is also exceptionally low - I paid $600 / month for a 2-bedroom apartment 4 blocks from campus. Heavy discount if you're a contributing mormon, and of course the big down-side for most people is that almost everyone is. You don't have to be mormon, but it's a dry campus and absolutely not a party school. So most of the other non-mormons are either from a similarly conservative culture (muslims, usually, a few christians) or just recognize the bargain. Despite the general religiosity and political affiliation, the science classes were actually religion-free, a pleasant surprise, and treated evolution and climate change the way I'd expect at any other university.
Majored in computer science. There's a lot of student-friendly work nearby, especially for software people. I really couldn't stand the local culture and I'm even from a pretty conservative christian home, but I was there to get down to business so I worked as much as I could, maxed out credit hours I could take (12 - 18 credit hours all costs the same), and got out in 4 years with a solid education, no debt and enough savings to comfortably start my real adult life right away. A hard 4 years, but looking back it was clearly the right call compared to my peers. Tuition prices at other colleges have just never seemed worth it. Had I not gotten into BYU I would likely have tried to just get software jobs with no degree, or gone into a trade like welding.
Majored in computer science. There's a lot of student-friendly work nearby, especially for software people. I really couldn't stand the local culture and I'm even from a pretty conservative christian home, but I was there to get down to business so I worked as much as I could, maxed out credit hours I could take (12 - 18 credit hours all costs the same), and got out in 4 years with a solid education, no debt and enough savings to comfortably start my real adult life right away. A hard 4 years, but looking back it was clearly the right call compared to my peers. Tuition prices at other colleges have just never seemed worth it. Had I not gotten into BYU I would likely have tried to just get software jobs with no degree, or gone into a trade like welding.