@cinnamon1212: “Yale will get you in the door more easily than USC.”
On the one hand, yes, that’s true. USC isn’t Yale. On the other hand, $250K+ can be invested many ways, and if the OP does well at USC, they can get in to an elite masters program that opens doors to IB/MC/politics as well as Yale undergrad.
Or work a few years and get an M7 MBA (requires drive, accomplishments, etc., but that would be true if you want to leverage the benefits of a Yale degree as well, IMO).
Or just invest that $250K. At fairly conservative 5% real returns, after 40 years (when the OP would be about 58) that $250K would be over $1.7M in today’s dollars, or pretty much enough to retire on. And that is not counting any career earnings or compounding on those investments.
Life doesn’t end immediately after undergrad, after all.