I'm a senior in high school with no idea where I want to go to college. My parents have told me they can help very little, as I have 2 brothers and their expenses. I'm seriously scared because I don't want to be in debt for the rest of my life and the deadline is coming up.

I think something you should consider is what you want to study, what sorts of jobs exist for those fields, and which universities are going to put you in the right direction. Given your list of interests you're almost certainly going to want to go to a University, not a CC. As other people mention, with your grades you should be able to get some great scholarships even to private universities.

I see in some of your posts that you are interested in computers, math, etc. If your interests run towards practical problem solving, that suggests some sort of engineering, industrial/product design or computer science degree, with a future job as some form of physical or software engineer/designer. You're going to want to look for a school with a good track record of providing practical projects, good internships, and a variety of related minors.

If instead your interests run towards academic curiosity and research, you're looking at something like a Mathematics, Physics or Computer Science degree, which will probably need to include a PhD. Your future jobs would be in researching or teaching, either at a lab or a University. In that case you're going to want to look at a school that has a strong graduate program and connections with labs around the country.

Given your stated interests, I'd figure out which of those routes sounds best and apply to as many relevant schools as you can, both in and out of state. You should consider some places like Carnegie Mellon, MIT, etc. especially if you're thinking about going the computer science route. Also keep practical focused colleges like Olin in mind if you're looking at an engineering degree.

/r/personalfinance Thread