After College Job: Trading

[chisness]

Trading seems cool because it's like poker -- you can basically build your own strategy and have unlimited potential.

At my school's job fair today there were a good number of smallish trading firms that had programs based something like this:

1) few weeks of intro/training
2) 6 months of mock trading and researching trading methods, as well as suggesting trading methods to real traders
3) start trading

These programs worry me a little because they just seem so unstructured. Am I going to just be using previously created strategies by a firm without learning much unless I can come up with something (how hard is this?)? Will I be learning much since I can't be taking much risk with the firm's money being such an amateur?

Is it best to get into trading later when you have your own capital to work with instead of just trading a firm's money? Would it be more effective to start off in Banking? Where do the top traders come from? Programs like these? Programs at big banks?