Should I still consider university?

[Ogheneyerho Emojerhi]

Hello, I am a 17 year old girl from London who has recently gotten very interested in real estate. I see it as a viable viechle to build wealth and achieve my dream: financial freedom. So as a result, I've been doing everything to educate myself. Reading books and taking notes, reaching out to people, listening to podcasts, and even joining this community. Because I'm starting out younger than most, to me, getting rich by my mid twenties, say age 25-26, seems like quite a reasonable goal. Naturally, I'd want to make it even before my mid 20s, so I'm thinking about what I can do to help myself now and in the next few years. 

Here's where I face the dilemma: I'm meant to be planning on going to university. However, I want to get an apprentenship somewhere at a real estate company, or any environment that encourages entrepreneurship and investing so I can learn from those already in the business, build up a network, find a mentor, etc. This means I might have to give up on uni. My parents are quite traditional, so they want to me go to university. They're open minded enough to not force me if I truly don't want to, but they would still like it. It's not their wants and opinion im more concerned about, however. It's what I'll miss by not going to university. Since age 14, I've been counting down the years to uni, and now it's pretty close. I know now that I don't need a university degree to be financially free, but I feel like university will provide a priceless lifetime experience: networking, meeting life changing people, learning important lessons, studying a subject that interests me in detail, being a young person and having fun, and or course the famous 'uni student lifestyle'. I want to experience this, but I'm also so determined on achieving my dream of becoming rich before 25.

So, what are your thoughts?  I will still do more research and thinking, but what do you think?  Did you choose not to go to university?  How does that make you feel now?  Do you regret it?  Did you invest that time instead into setting up a business and/ or learning how to get into real estate? Do you feel left out whenever other people talk about their uni years? While your peers were at uni, were you having second thoughts?  Or on the other side of the spectrum, did you go to university?  Do you feel like it has taught you important lessons and helped you meet important people that were instrumental to your success now? Or was it a waste of time? Could you have built your wealth earlier and faster had you decided not to go at all? 

I'm genuinely interested in hearing other people's stories and will probably use them to help gauge my decision. I'm still leaning towards going to university regardless. My plan was to study computer science or software engineering, because it would help me find a "good job" with a "stable salary", and to do French because I genuinely love it. I would also get the opportunity to spend a year in a French speaking country. 

So please, what are your thoughts?  I'd love to hear them.