Consider a hypothetical scenario with an 18 year old living in the state of Maryland in the United States, in his freshman year of college studying for a four-year degree in an engineering field. He solely depends on his father (mother is not in the picture anymore), who makes a respectably above-average salary for the area. Consider said father has just passed away, leaving the teen with >$500,000 from his retirement fund alone, along with a car (leaving the teen with having two vehicles now) and other inheritances that do not include any land. They were originally renting a 2-bedroom apartment and the teen commuting to college, but now the teen needs to figure out how to live on his own without a large income. The apartment is too expensive for him to justify continuing to live in alone. He has the skills to make ~$30k-$35k per year in full-time work as-is, but only currently makes ~$8k per year in part time work.
The way I see it, he has two major options:
Minimize cost of living and finish college:
If he moves all the things he doesn't need into storage and lives on-campus or in a cheap studio apartment close to the campus he can minimize the amount of money he spends until he graduates, and use the inheritance to finish debt-free and can get a job that pays over $60k-$80k per year to start. He can use the money that's left to purchase a house later.
Enter the workforce immediately:
If he gets a reasonable job and uses the inheritance to purchase a home close to his place of work, he should be able to stabilize himself enough that he can resume studies to finish his degree over a longer period of time (debt-free).
Are there better options for a young adult surviving the loss of all his providers, or is there something I'm not considering?
Answers should be purely in terms of economic viability in any general scenario similar to the one above (though specific examples are not discouraged as they can be useful in illustrating your point), and the teen continuing life without wasting what he has to work with and staying above the poverty line.