Macc - CSUF or out of state?

Hey Everybody,

So a little background about myself - I'm a 27 year old finance graduate from CSUF going through a quarter life crisis and desperately trying to improve my career situation. I've only been working for about 2 years (graduated late between coming from overseas, switching majors, and taking a year off) and have been stuck in an unrelated "account manager" job with zero prospects and little pay. I can only blame myself for not interning/networking and for accepting the very first job offered. I've matured a lot living in the real world, and am coming to the conclusion that if I don't want to be waiting for social security checks to buy groceries at 70, I either need to go back to school or get lucky landing a new gig.

I've been applying like a mad man for about a month but not much worthwhile has been coming back. I've been noticing that for the jobs I'm interested in (real estate, finance, and accounting primarily), accounting is king in getting your foot in the door. At the very least, most accounting backgrounds will have decent job security and pay. So lately I've been looking into how to change careers and from what I've been reading, Macc is the way to go.

Where I currently live with family, I can reasonably attend CSUF, UCI, CSULB, and Chapman while working full, maybe half time. CSUF, in particular, would probably only cost me around $10k. However, and correct me if I'm wrong, it seems except for USC no other school in California carries the same prestige of a top program or the best recruiting. USC is very expensive both in tuition and living, since I would likely have to move out of family home to near LA, not to mention the difficulty of getting in.

Given the above, my questions are as follows:

Does a Macc provide any job prospects if I don't get recruited and takes me a while to complete the CPA?

While CSUF may have a respectable accounting program, I hear the recruiting is pretty lackluster and has a fairly unimpressive exam pass rate (43.8% for first-time testing events in 2015). Do I really want to be going here to save a few bucks (well.. more like 35K)?

...or should I seriously consider an out of state program that is highly ranked and recruited, yet still lower in cost and maybe difficultly in getting in than USC? I've been considering A&M, AZ State, BYU, IU, UW, to name a few.

Will I have trouble getting into Big 4 if I graduate around 29 with an undergrad GPA of 3.36 (my business GPA is good, but really bombed my first year when in CS)? If so, are there many other solid career paths?

What concentration would you recommend purely in terms of job outlook/compensation?

Any concentrations that would prepare me for real estate, both professionally and in personal investing?

Thank you!