yes you need to be willing to relocate. but the material you are taught is all outdated useless garbage. youll learn more in the field in a week than all year there.
ive heard good things about triton- being that they work with GM and set you up with an apprenticeship while in school (if thats true)
UTI is nothing but a big money making machine that lies about their entire program and everything about their school. They advertise it as like 50% lab time, its more like 10-15% total lab time you dont get a $1500 tool voucher at the end, you get 500 including shipping and tax. Nothing bad happened to me there, im not hating on the school out of spite for something i was wronged for. i just feel that my money was not well spent. If you are completely oblivious to the fact that cars exist in the world you may learn enough to make it worth it, otherwise its a waste.
I did put effort in, i got into a grad program. finished with damn near a 4.0 and 100% attendance. but without the graduate program it would have all been a waste. the typical UTI graduate is in my opinion not qualified to work at a jiffy lube.
if you go to UTI out of illinois you actually do get an associates, every other campus does it. Ferris and u of phoenix online accept credits from UTI so if you want to go the mech eng or auto eng bachelors route you can do that.
Strive to get into a grad program if you go there, they're free- and make all the BS well worth it.
i know carmax does aprenticeships, they will set you up with a mentor and actually have classes they send you too- that might be something else for you to look into kyle.
Take some electrical and diagnostic classes at COD, something to familiarise you with sensors and what type of signals they put out and what they do on a car. learn how circuits work, power distribution- theories of series and parallel circuits. ***how to read wiring diagrams***.
once you have that down the rest is common sense.