<p>Just go to a public school in your area, or at the very least, in your state. Live at home if you can. A PhD does NOT come cheap. Expect to be saddled in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. You need to conserve as much money as possible in your undergrad schooling, which, in the grand scheme of things, does not matter much if a PhD is really in your sights. Because for graduate school, all that matters is your GPA and work experience. That’s it. So you’d be wise to go to a less prestigious, in-state public school to save money and more likely to get a high GPA than if you were to go to Cornell or Stanford.</p>