Hey, I'm right out of college, with the opportunity to join a upstart prop firm, with some career traders. I understand why they make you put up some money. But for a kid that hasn't traded professionally yet, is there any training session, or mentoring program usually? Or do they say "oh hi, enjoy trading".
When I joined my firm, the head trader would show you the ropes. The first week while your account is being set up, he would have you sit behind him and watch him trade. You can ask him questions and anything you wanted to know. After your account was set up, he had a beginner trader packet that he would give you. It had a couple of stategies in it that would just get you used to putting orders on. You wouldn't really make or lose much money but it was mainly just to get you comfortable with the hotkeys and the trading platform. The strategies were simple like finding big bids and offers, finding "shorties" and things like that. We use Trade Ideas to filter out stocks that fit what he was looking for. You start out just trading this. After a couple weeks, you can start trading his style, which is stocks moving on news. He would always have the new traders sitting right next to him so you could see what he was trading and he could see how you are trading. He would have you call out all your trades to him before you put them on so he could check to see if it's a good trade to be getting into. He would also be calling out all of the trades that he was getting into also. So that's how he starts every one at our firm.
Find yourself a profitable trader and kiss their ass until they take you on as a student. Otherwise, take some prop firm training classes with a group of other students and learn how to churn your account with useless scalping strategies. The desk fee and commissions will finish your account in a few months.