I graduated with a BS in Info Systems. Job prospects for my degree were not so great, and I basically took the first job offer I received up on graduation, which was working as a financial analyst. For reasons I dont' want to discuss, I don't want to work in the field anymore.

I am considering going back to school, more specifically a B.S in Computer Engineering. Is it too late to get financial aid when you're in your mid 20s? are there any schools that offer fin aid for people like me? Or is it possible to join a graduate school without any solid background in engineering, but I don't think that is feasible..

Anyway, hope you guys can help me out as I'm sure someone has been through something similar if not the same predicament.

FYI I recently got my h1b

If I were you I would find a consulting company and get training on one of the IT jobs and start working within few months. I have friends who graduated on Biology major and working fine in IT. After you have few years of experience on the field its easier to get into Graduate school for IT course. Dont waste your time getting second Bachelors degree, its not worth it.

I believe you need core programming knowledge to succeed in IT field such as data structure, Linked List, assembly language programming etc. But I don't believe you need to go back to traditional school to get those knowledges. You can study on your own and there are many many online site like edureka, coursera, pluralsight, lynda etc which can help you out. Once you know the basic of core programming then you can pick any subjects like Database, Hadoop, Java, web, testing, sys admin or networking etc. Take you time and don't jump directly into high level technology from the day 1 like Hadoop. Even if you land on the job you will hit the wall in future if you do not have core knowledge. Since you graduated from BS Info system I guess you already have some of those core knowledges.

I agree with you sajhamitra in that one doesn't have to go traditional schools and spend thousands when one can be vocationally trained in employable technological skills through online or MOOC courses.

On a different note; I tend to enroll in a wide variety of MOOCs but seldom complete one. Then I read a recent article in The Atlantic that the completion rate for MOOC enrolee is as low as 5%. It seems, arguably, that students who already have traditional college degrees fare better in self-paced online learning models.

To Mike Tyson - I would pause before going back to traditional school for a Bachelor's Degree in Applied Information Technology related courses. Obviously there would not be easy online substitutes for pure science degrees like Bachelor's in Computer Science but if I set myself to learn, say, Tableau or SAS, which are employable skills & technologies in current market, there are options to learn without going to traditional schools.