What college degree should I pursue to learn about stock and forex markets?
There are several paths of study you could undertake. If you want to learn the fundamentals of the stock market and become a financial analyst, then finance, economics, and accounting (yes, accounting) are all good to study either on your own or in an institution. Furthermore, if you want to study a specific industry, it can't hurt to know a fair amount of the science behind that particular industry. For example, if you want to understand the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries, knowledge of clinical trials, the FDA's approval process (in the US, at least), off-label uses for drugs, genetic engineering, etc. are all good to know. You don't have to become an expert, but having a firm grasp on the science is extremely useful when evaluating a company's prospects. If you're interested in becoming an algorithmic trader or a quant, then physics, certain fields of engineering, signals processing, applied math, computer science, or econometrics will get you much farther than a standard finance or accounting degree. Most people can learn the basics of finance; not everyone can learn advanced mathematics. A lot of the above applies to learning about the forex market as well. Economics is certainly helpful, especially central bank policy, but since the forex market is so massive and liquid, many mathematical tools are necessary because algorithms play a key role as well. Per littleadv's suggestion, an MBA with a concentration in finance may be an option for someone who already has a degree. Also, an MSF (Master of Science in Finance) or a degree in financial engineering (called an MFE, or ORFE, for Operations Research and Financial Engineering) are other, potentially better options for someone pursuing a more technical career. A high-octane trading firm may not care that you've taken marketing and management classes; they want to hire someone who can understand complex algorithms and design and implement new ones quickly.  Some MSF programs are pre-experience programs, which means that in exchange for taking more time to complete, they don't expect you to have significant work experience in the financial industry. An MBA might require such experience, however. Financial Economics, although, as I understand it, not all colleges offer this major.
"First, it's clear from your story that you very likely should be able to receive some financial aid.  That may be in the form of loans or, better, grants in which you just get free money to attend college.  For example, a Pell grant.  You won't get all you'd need for a free ride this way, but you can really make a dent in what you'd pay.  The college may likely also provide financial aid to you.  In order to get any of this, though, you have to fill out a FAFSA.  There are deadlines for this for each state and each college (there you would ask individually).  I'd get looking into that as soon as you can. Do student loans have to be paid monthly?  Any loan is a specific agreement between a lender and a borrower, so any payment terms could apply, such as bimonthly or quarterly.  But monthly seems like the most reasonable assumption.  Generally, you should assume the least favorable (reasonably likely) terms for you, so that you are prepared for a worst-case scenario.  Let's say monthly. Can I just, as I had hoped, borrow large sums of money and only start   paying them after college? Yes.  That is a fair summary of all a student loan is.  Importantly, though, some loans are federal government subsidized loans for which the interest on the loan is paid for you as long as you stay in college + 6 months (although do check that is the current situation).  Unsubsidized loans may accrue interest from the start of the loan period.  If you have the option, obviously try hard to get the subsidized loans as the interest can be significant.  I made a point to only take subsidized loans.   WARNING: Student loans currently enjoy a (nearly?) unique status in America as being one of the only loan types that are not forgivable in bankruptcy.  This means that if you leave college with $100,000 in debt that begins accruing interest, there is no way for you to get out of it short of fleeing the country or existence.  And at that point the creditors may come after your mother for the balance.  These loans can balloon into outrageous amounts due to compounding interest.  Please have a healthy fear of student loans.  For more on this, listen to this hour long radio program about this. Would a minimum wage job help,  Of course it will ""help"" but will it ""help enough""?  That depends on how much you work.  If you make $7.50/hr and work 20 hrs/week for all but 3 weeks of the year, after taxes you will be adding about $6,000 to offset your costs.  In 3 years of college (*see below), that's $18,000, which, depending on where you go, is not bad at helping defray costs.  If you are at full-time (40 hrs), then it is $12k/yr or $36k toward defraying costs.  These numbers are nothing to sniff at. Do you have any computer/web/graphics skills?  It's possible you could find ways to make more than minimum wage if you learn some niche IT industry skill.  (If I could go back and re-do those years I wouldn't have wasted much time delivering pizzas and would have learned HTML in the 90s and would have potentially made some significant money.) would college and full-time job be manageable together?  That's highly specific to each situation (which job?  how far a commute to it?  which major? how efficient are you?  how easily do you learn?) but I would say that, for the most part, it's not a good idea, not only for the academic-achievement side of it, but the personal-enrichment aspect of college.  Clubs, sports, relationships, activities, dorm bull sessions, all that good stuff, they deserve their space and time and it'd be a shame to miss out on that because you're on the 2nd shift at Wal-Mart 40hrs/week. How do I find out what scholarships, grants, and financial aid I can apply for?  Are you in a high school with a career or guidance counselor?  If so, go to that person about this as a start.  If not, there are tons of resources out there.  Public libraries should have huge directories of scholarships.  The Federal Student Loan program has a website.  There are also a lot of resources online found by just searching Google for scholarships--though do be careful about any online sources (including this advice!). Sermon: Lastly, please carefully consider the overall cost vs. benefit to you.  College in 2012 is anything but cheap.  A typical price for a textbook is $150 or more.  Tuition and board can range over $40k at private colleges.  There is a recent growing call for Americans to re-think the automatic nature of going to college considering the enormous financial burden it puts many families under.  Charles Murray, for one, has put out a book suggesting that far too many students go to college now, to society's and many individuals' detriment (he's a controversial thinker, but I think some of his points are valid and actually urgent).  With all that said, consider ways to go to college but keep costs down.  Public colleges in your state will almost always be significantly cheaper than private or out-of-state.  Once there, aim for As and Bs--don't cheat yourself out of what you pay for.  And lastly, consider a plan in which you complete college in three years, by attending summer courses.  This website has a number of other options for helping to reduce the cost of college." "College courses focus mainly on theory. In the real world you'll need to learn the tools to gather and analyze the data.  For the most part what is taught in college is pretty worthless. I remember my database class in business school was about ""database theory"". Is was a complete waste of time and money. Didn't learn a single useful thing.  Learning these hands on things will put you ahead of 95% of your peers.  SQL is the coding language used in data bases  R is used for statistical analysis   OBIEE is a reporting tool that can link to data bases then report the data  Tableau another reporting tool the is more visual than OBIEE  None of the things are difficult to learn. So don't be intimidated.   TLDR I learned more by spending $100 on udemy then in college." "&gt; Not all Bachelor's are the same, DeVry...  Of course! A degree in ""gender studies"" is worthless, while a degree in ""computer science"" worth more. But, with so many ""computer science"" degrees, even that degree does not give you much headway... without experience.  It's very simple what happens today, compared to the past.  Today, the idea is to keep kids in schools, for as long as possible (because BAs are worthless and you need Masters), charge them tons of money, pass them so they continue to pay, get them into debt and then pay them less, because so many people have the degrees. Even require BA degree for jobs that don't need it.  In the past, if you finished high school, it was an accomplishment. If you got accepted to college, it was an accomplishment. If you survived the first year in college or got your bachelor degree, it was a major accomplishment.  **If you did not know, those accomplishments in the past gave you substantial(!!!) benefits compared to others.**  It was much cheaper in the past and much better education. They did not care about money, and will kick you out of college for any fail.  So, in the past to be a teller in the bank, you did not need to finish high school, but just be good with basic algebra.  **Today, you need a BA degree and get a lousy salary to be teller in a bank. Do you understand what happened here?**  Also, in the past, a person with lower socioeconomic background, if they finish high school or got a BA, it would (for sure) really change their lives and they become middle or high class.  Today, a person with poor socioeconomic background, even if they got their [worthless] BA degree, they are worst off because they do not have any competitive advantage over other people as all of them have degrees too... you are worst off, because you are in debt to get the degree and the ""education"" you got is bad." "&gt; People will lose faith in college degrees and start working as contractors, plumbers, mechanics, etc. This will generate a direct wealth, but it will also severely hurt our ability to innovate due to the resulting ""brain drain""  I disagree. People who do not benefit from a college education will stop muddling through college, and be productive instead. People who benefit from advanced training in a field will still find college worthwhile. In fact, maybe some decently smart people will contribute to plumbing innovation instead of learning (economically) useless art history. (This is only to speak of economic value of education. Education is still a fine thing for anyone to obtain as a ""consumer good"".)" It's good, it's more important that you are at a top school.   The industry is pretty competitive, but I go to a very much non - target school,and I landed a killer internship in sales and trading due to networking my balls off and failing a bunch of times.  My major is Finance, with a Stats minor that I'll be dropping. "When you say ""major"", I take it you're an undergrad? If so, how many years left do you have in your program? I ask because it might be worthwhile to major in math in lieu of - or in addition to - finance. It's unlikely that an undergraduate major in a business school will give you the technical skill-set necessary to do what you want. Also, if you want to do prop trading, learn as much statistics/econometrics as you can handle.   As for masters programs, I'm not really sure. MFE programs seem more aimed towards people working on the sell-side, e.g. as derivatives quants.  EDIT: I accidentally some grammar." Go check out wallstreetoasis.com. There are a lot of people out there like you and that site has a lot of folks in the industry. It's segregated by arms so you'll also probably be able to get a feel for what kind of finance you might or might not be suited for. Quant here  The best undergrad for getting into MFE is mathematics, second best physics, etc... I think you get the trend here.  There are computational finance PhDs which blend math, finance and programming which IMO are a much better value for money (because they are free). Also masters level courses concentrate on breadth rather than depth. They are good for consulting, starting out at a desk etc.. PhD programs are for academics and for more in depth model building.  Take math, lots of it. Use your summers to get internships and built networks and experience.