Best smartphone plan for 3 months exchange student in LA?

Hi everybody,

in just over three weeks I'll be leaving my hometown Hamburg, Germany for a 3-months MBA exchange at UCLA. I completely rely on mobile data for so many things (local deals, maps, email, whatsapp, opentable etc.) that I will definitely need a smartphone plan in the US as well.

But when I look at for example the Verizon prepaid offerings, it seems REALLY expensive. http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/prepay.jsp

$80 for just 1 gig of data? Is that really the going rate?

I would appreciate any kind of advice on where to save a few bucks, also I wouldn't need unlimited text and talk - a few hundred of each would be more than enough and I'd rather have 2+ gigs of data...

Thanks in advance, guys!