What is the best way to find funds for starting a company?

The best place to find your first funds are from customers, especially if you'll be selling to businesses. Sell them on the problem you can solve for them, and how you intend to solve it. Be open that you need to build the solution, but ask them to fund the development. When customers put up the money, you'll know that the problem you're solving is meaningful to them, which is a great vote of confidence. A variety of this, especially for consumer businesses, is Kickstarter or Indigogo. 

Another place to look for funds are the people who know you best and are willing to make a bet on you. If you are fortunate to have friends and family with an ability to support you, make the ask, even if it's relatively small - that's the place to start. 

Leah,

I’m a little confused about where you are along the college/career decision timeline, so please excuse me if my answer doesn’t help. I know little of business, but I watched an experienced entrepreneur who had had good and bad experiences and he had three foundational rules: (1) I don’t remember the first, (2) the second was to only spend your money on capital, and (3) the third was to never go into debt.

I’m sure you know that you could buy a franchise with a bank loan (partially violating rule #2 and mostly violating rule #3), but you are buying some capital. Then for a true startup, you work in your garage until you can draw up a business plan and get some venture capital.

What I really want to ask about your intriguing question is why you want to go to college and get a degree for which there are just a few jobs available and then drop it and start a business. That violates rule #2 and #3 right away. Unless you have other reasons for getting a degree and then going into business, I suggest you skip college altogether. And I would suggest the same for the opposite case, to skip the business and get a college degree in a subject that you love and move to a place closer to work.

Good luck.