<p>^ Georgia Tech is a better school for CS compared to Auburn & Alabama, but if your goal is to become a practicing software engineer, the benefit of going to Georgia Tech may not outweigh the cost. If you don’t foresee yourself being a better student than the average at Georgia Tech and doing research with a professor, with the ultimate goal of getting into an even better graduate school, I just don’t know if there’s a great argument for paying a bunch of money for a CS degree. There are so many jobs in CS that graduating with a decent GPA with any kind of experience and a degree from a large state university pretty much guarantees you’ll find a job somewhere. (Disclaimer: the future is a hard thing to predict, and the situation may be very different when you graduate.)</p>