OP If your parents aren’t at all concerned about the $$, it wouldn’t at all affect their lifestyle or retirement, and they are even encouraging you to take the Ivy, then you should drop $$ out of the equation. Take your parents at their word and choose based on other factors that are more important to you.
For this individual, the $240,000 savings is a sure thing. Whether an Ivy would be an advantage is a guess.
@Onthebubble “We only hire full time college grads from our internship program. We have 7 every summer for two months and they generally make $5,000 plus $24 an hour for overtime. In the last 5 years, only one Ivy kid was asked back, one from Penn…”
Certainly, many great students go to Ivies and many go elsewhere. For each of them, the identify and capture opportunities that are a fit for them in college will make all of the difference.
I would say that for that price you will not get the best Ivy students. My sophomore Ivy student has accepted a summer internship that pays $20k for about 10 weeks this summer plus overtime, and turned down several others. That doesn’t mean that the Ivy is a better choice of worse choice for someone else.
@onthebubble “And you are wrong on salaries. I believe on average Washington & Lee graduates make the most to start apart from STEM graduates, where non Ivy League schools prevail.”
You can claim whatever you want on average, but no student majors in STEM. The major in something specific. On average, pay is pretty consistent for ChemE, but not for CS.
Again @Pizzagirl is completely right to say that people who say that you should always choose the Ivy show a lack of knowledge, but so are the people who believe you should always choose the cash.
The unfortunate thing is that people tend to have a strong need to believe that what they did is always the best solution for everyone else, when in reality the world is not so simple.
Pay much more depends on the job location than the name of the UG. Surely, the pay is very different in Midwest vs NYC vs LA.
Ivy= It’s not a matter of rigor so much as an environment, the opportunities and the networking.
USC or Ivy, it’d really depend on the student - fit, family situation, majors, where s/he wants to work…
OP, do you know your parents’ financial situation? Would the scholarship make a difference for them?
(a significant percentage freshmen at Harvard, for instance - about 14% - have parents who make 500K+, and the “average” student has a family that makes 125-250K.)
@Much2learn Total fiction. No company in the world would pay a sophomore that kind of money. See now everyone knows you aren’t credible. $20,000 for a summer intern. Laughable, seriously. Try again. It wasn’t long ago these same summer jobs were unpaid and kids applied for a stipend.
The most we see in NY for the SENIOR summer internships in financial services is $5 - $6k per month, and those are outliers.
Last summer Goldman Sachs paid summer interns about $5k per month and those would be rising seniors. It would be extremely rate for paid internships to be available until that summer.
“Ivy= It’s not a matter of rigor so much as an environment, the opportunities and the networking.”
USC appears to have a very strong active alum network. I don’t know why it would be worse than, say, Brown’s or Dartmouth’s. It’s just a different set of people. Again I have no dog in USC.
@OnTheBubble: I have no idea whether @Much2learn’s claim is legit or not, but I do know of a student from an Ivy-like who got paid over 6K a month for a west-coast internship as a freshman (summer before sophomore year). The student was sheepish about the salary, because the following day he got a “better offer” from another company but code of ethics meant if you accept an internship somewhere, you can’t back out. So it’s not laughable. My guess is that West Coast costs of living + one upmanship between companies there, led to that.
@onthebubble Sorry, I am not making this up. You are using inflammatory language, but actually you can already see how that happens. Say $6k/month for 2.5 months is $15k then they are adding another $6k up-front for housing and expenses. They are paying her $20k for 10 weeks plus overtime, and she has a signed contract. Her freshman summer she only earned $3,500 for a research assistantship on campus, which probably did not even cover food and rent. She has consistently taken the best opportunity available, not the most lucrative. Currently the two are aligned, but that has not always been the case.
I am also not claiming that her experience is typical or applies to everyone. She clearly has some differentiated abilities even at the Ivy League/MIT/Stanford/Northwestern/Duke/Cal Tech level. She was the only sophomore selected at this company from any school. I am not saying that is typical. What I am saying is that she has leveraged opportunities to get even better opportunities, beginning in early high school, and her college provides an amazing set of opportunities for students who are willing to grab them and run.
The point is that when a student like that can find a school with opportunities that line up well for their particular interests they should strongly consider it, whether that school is USC or an Ivy.
@OnTheBubble $50 an hour for a sophomore college intern at a large CA software company is easy enough to believe. There are high school programmers getting paid enough for part-time work that they question whether they need to get a college degree. (~$5K/month if you figured the full time rate.)
I agree with what much2learn has to say. In fact I have seen a 30k internship for this summer. And that is typical for some companies. I heard that last summer some kids at startups made as much as 50k.
I have also seen some very high summer internship salaries…$6000 a month PLUS all living expenses…and in some places with very expensive real estate. Total compensation for a summer…well over $20,000. Totally believable.
I have heard of similar internships, typically in Silicon Valley, Boston or New York for Google or another similar tech company. They are somewhat rare, and only available to a handful of students at a number of schools.
According to Glass Door Google internships are paying about $7000 monthly. That seems in line with what my son got a few years ago as an intern after his junior year accounting for inflation. He got nicely paid the summer before sophomore year, but not as much as at Google. The summer after freshman year he got $25 an hour - that was back in 2008. And both CA internships flew him out and I think contributed to housing.
Younger son in IR, never made anything like that. He made $12 an hour plus free housing and one meal a day the last summer he worked for Tufts.
But all of this is kind of irrelevant for the OP who doesn’t think he’s going to major in CS.
I have a kid who made $19k in a summer back in 2010.
Didn’t read through the whole 7 pages. Sounds like your parents are ready to give you a gift, an expensive one and one they perceive as worth the expense. Accept it, do well, and don’t waste it! If you major in CS etc., an Ivy is unlikely to put in any disadvantage than USC, but if you change your mind and want to major in something else, with few exceptions, chances are the Ivy will be more helpful. Congratulations! Make your parents proud! 
@pizzagirl, I am not saying Ivy is better. This is the impression I have gotten from the person who posted this thread who could not decide between USC and an Ivy. All I am suggesting is that taking the full ride now and decide later.
I came back after a few more pages of posts and read the same thing over and over which makes me wonder if many read what the OP said originally.
“Right now I’m undecided, but honestly probably not something super secure like CS or engineering.”
“Also, I wanted to add that I have no plans for med school or law school currently (likely no need for parental help with grad schools)”
They are NOT majoring in CS or Engineering. They have NO plans to go to grad school, which means a Phd is unlikely, 
so not sure why all the suggestions to save money for that.
OP, since you aren’t set on a major, go to the school where you want to go and make friends with the people you want to for those 4 years, along with the people you want to have as future connections, ow where you may meet your future spouse (you never know), etc. Both schools offer many majors to settle on and as privates, give you the flexibility to move into them. You said your mom is actually happier with you going to the Ivy, so you can choose that with no guilt, or USC with no guilt cause it is tuition free. Let us know what you decide, this is fascinating!
See, now that everyone knows that you can jump to (unfounded) conclusions … :))
DS is a sophomore. DS will be paid $22k as an intern this summer, plus the use of a beautiful apartment, plus meals, plus flights.
Yep, there are people rocking some serious cognitive biases on CC…