I went to USF for undergrad and moved to Boston for grad school.
All I can offer is some advice on Tampa: if attending USF, live in Tampa palms. The commute is ten minutes except during such hour. Tampa is an extreme version of all of the coastal urban areas of FL: it's heavily populated in a mix of modern, upscale, cookie cutter apartments and condos and subdivisions, and suddenly (usually when you go inland past an interstate) it's country backwoods FL cracker land. This is not to say anything about old native Floridians.
Tampa has a bus system, but if you're used to even the worst public transit (some would say this is Boston, but I love the MBTA) Tampa will seem totally inaccessible. And if you have a car, it's still totally inaccessible. You son't want to walk because it's 95 degrees and 100 percent humidity at midnight, and when the sun is out it's blistering hot, and when it rains it's still humid and you're totally drenched. You can't ride a bike safely, non-corporate restaurants are few and far between and only sometimes good... Must I go on?
But I have to say that I loved USF and the faculty of the political science and philosophy departments. Driving on campus during peak times (and all the time during the firs two weeks of the semester) is terrible. Finding parking is terrible unless you have faculty/staff/gold-level/whatever permit, and these are more expensive than just using a helicopter to get to school. But if you can get to campus before 8:00 or even 7:30, you're good. THe best time there is the summer: despite the heat, the huge campus is nice with only 2,000 or so students around.
Please, don't be scared away from Tampa by my fear of suburban distopias and blistering heat.
P.s., You will notice right away that there is no disputing Tampa's claim to being home to the most strip clubs and adult toy stores per capita in the US.
