You don't have to go to college if you are self-motivated. I actually think it's detrimental because it fills the time and gives you an excuse for being lazy. "Oh but I'm going to school already, I don't have time to hack together X with all my schoolwork!".
My unqualified advice: learn machine learning/AI. MIT OpenCourseware has good lecture notes and I believe Stanford's ML course has free lecture videos. These were the most interesting parts of my undergrad experience (and very practical too)
My unqualified advice: learn machine learning/AI. MIT OpenCourseware has good lecture notes and I believe Stanford's ML course has free lecture videos. These were the most interesting parts of my undergrad experience (and very practical too)