Need advice for going to college

[Aegon]

I'm a lawyer, I've been out for 10 years and I absolutely hate it...you should only do it if it really is your calling in life (which is only the case for a very small percentage of people who go to law school--almost all of them are doing it because they think they'll make money).

Unless you get into a state school it is an awful lot of money (it will easily set you back six figures) and you'll be stuck making the same $60K as an associate for a small to medium sized firm, or you'll be stuck doing document review (if you don't know what document review is, look it up).  If you think you're coming out of school with a $100K+ job in hand you're absolutely kidding yourself--the largest firms in the country have immovable criteria for hiring so that they can show off to clients that they only hire the most credentialed lawyers.  This means you either needed to graduate from an Ivy League school (or of that ilk like Duke, Stanford, etc.) or you were top of the class of any non-prestigious law school.

If you're already making $60K a year then there is no need for you to go to law school unless practicing law is a burning desire within you and that's the only thing that will make you happy. Even in the largest cities in the US, you will be very hard-pressed to do better than that.  In fact I would discourage you from going to college altogether unless you're totally miserable with what you're doing...remember that ANYONE can get a college degree now so unless it's a something in hard science, it doesn't really improve your earnings potential.

I had wanted to be a lawyer for a good part of my young life but decided I didn't want it enough to go through any of that.