Get into an IT department of a large company in any capacity – some or the best titles are assistant or a secretary reporting to a person who manages the IT department or at list have a capacity to assign duties. Do your job well, complete all the tasks before the deadlines, and report to your supervisor as soon as you completed the task. Volunteer your services for any tasks that others within your department don’t want to do or cannot do due to whatever reason. Doing these steps will allow you to achieve the following: 1. Open doors into the field/profession you want to be in; 2. Give you exposure, hands-on training and experience while YOU are being paid; Then start doing the following steps: 1. Buy trying to complete all your tasks before assigned deadlines make your manager scramble to give you more duties and increasingly complex tasks; 2. Open eyes of your manager that you could be used to unload duties (actual IT-related tasks) that others can’t or don’t want to do; 3. This, in turn, gives you even greater exposure to even more technical/complex IT-related tasks and more IT-related hands-on training. 4. Start asking to be sent to courses you’ve picked. Start getting certifications on any subject you’ve mastered (MS Office, VB, etc.) 5. As for adjustment of your status to better reflect the duties you are now doing and to allow your manager to unload even higher-level tasks on you. 6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 each time increasing your goals. I am an immigrant from Russia. In Russia I went through 4 years of prestigious University (economic degree) but did not complete the actual Bachelors degree as my immigration process had to be completed before my graduation. I came to the US when I was around 21. When in US, just like you, I did not feel like going through another 4-6 years of schooling with no guarantee of adequate income afterwards to compensate me for the time and money spent during the college years. I used the above technique to first learn English (I spent 1 year working in a restaurant and using this job to talk to English-speakers – this was a minimum wage job). Then, I received my Administrative and Accounting credentials as follows: a. got a job as a junior secretary to a General Manager in one of the largest family of car dealerships in California with a salary of 24k a year; b. within a year I became his Administrative Assistant with 30k a year and access to hight-level duties; c. On my 3rd year I started programming some VB routines in MS Office (custom programs in MS Acces